Sirhan Sirhan
Sirhan Bishara Sirhan (/sɪərˈhɑːn/;[2] Arabic: سرحان بشارة سرحان Sirḥān Bišāra Sirḥān; born March 19, 1944) is a Palestinian-Jordanian man who assassinated Senator Robert F. Kennedy Sr., a younger brother of American president John F. Kennedy and a candidate for the Democratic nomination in the 1968 United States presidential election. On June 5, 1968, Sirhan shot and mortally wounded Robert Kennedy shortly after midnight at the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles; Kennedy died the next day at Good Samaritan Hospital. The circumstances surrounding the attack, which took place five years after John's assassination, have led to numerous conspiracy theories.
Not to be confused with Sirhan Sirhan, a Palestinian militant.
Sirhan Sirhan
Jordanian
Incarcerated at Richard J. Donovan Correctional Facility (as of 2024)
- First-degree murder
- assault with a deadly weapon with intent to commit murder (5 counts)[1]
Death by gas chamber in 1969; commuted to life imprisonment with the possibility of parole in 1972
June 5, 1968
12:15 a.m.
Ambassador Hotel, Los Angeles, California, United States
5
In 1989, Sirhan told British journalist David Frost: "My only connection with Robert Kennedy was his sole support of Israel and his deliberate attempt to send those 50 fighter jets to Israel to obviously do harm to the Palestinians."[3] Some scholars believe that the assassination was the first major incident of political violence in the United States stemming from the Israeli–Palestinian conflict (Sirhan carried out the attack on the first anniversary of the 1967 Arab–Israeli War), though it occurred at a time when the American public was overwhelmingly focused on the Vietnam War.[4]
On April 17, 1969, Sirhan was convicted of first-degree murder, among other charges, and subsequently sentenced to death by gas chamber. In 1972, this was commuted to a life sentence in the aftermath of Furman v. Georgia. He is incarcerated at Richard J. Donovan Correctional Facility near San Diego. On August 27, 2021, after 15 years of being denied parole by the local state board, Sirhan was granted parole by a two-person panel.[5][6] Prosecutors declined to participate or to oppose his release under a policy by American lawyer George Gascón, the Los Angeles County District Attorney.[7] On January 13, 2022, California Governor Gavin Newsom blocked Sirhan's release on parole.[8] He was denied parole again on March 1, 2023.[9]
Early life[edit]
Sirhan Bishara Sirhan was born into an Arab Palestinian Christian family[10][11] in Mandatory Palestine, in Jerusalem's Musrara neighborhood, and became a Jordanian citizen after Jordan annexed the West Bank.[12][13][14] According to his mother, Mary, Sirhan was traumatized as a child by the violence he witnessed in the Arab–Israeli conflict, including the death of his older brother, who was run over by a military vehicle that was swerving to evade gunfire.[15]
When Sirhan was 12 years old, his family immigrated to the U.S., moving briefly to New York and then to California. He attended Eliot Junior High School, John Muir High School, and Pasadena City College. Shortly after the family's move to California, Sirhan's father, Bishara, returned alone to the Middle East.[16] Standing 5 feet 5 inches (165 cm) and weighing 120 pounds (54 kg) at age 20, Sirhan moved to Corona to train to be a jockey while working at a stable but lost his job and abandoned the pursuit after suffering a head injury in a racing accident.[17]
Sirhan never became a U.S. citizen, instead retaining his Jordanian citizenship.[11]
As an adult, Sirhan changed church denominations several times, joining Baptist and Seventh-day Adventist churches.[18] In 1966, he joined the esoteric organization Ancient Mystical Order of the Rose Cross, one of the Rosicrucian Orders.[19]