Robert F Kennedy assassin denied parole again

By Brandon DrenonBBC News, Washington

The assassin of 1968 presidential candidate Robert F Kennedy has been denied parole, two years after a review board recommended he walk free. 

California commissioners said Sirhan Sirhan, now 78, must do more work to understand what turns someone into a political assassin, his lawyer said.

In 2021 a panel of the parole board agreed with Sirhan's attorneys that he no longer posed a danger to the public.

But California's governor intervened to overrule the panel last year.

This was Sirhan's 16th parole rejection.

His lawyer, Angela Berry, argued that the board's decision was unduly influenced by Governor Gavin Newsom and by Kennedy relatives who remain opposed to Sirhan's release. 

"I do feel the board bent to the political whim of the governor," Ms Berry said after Wednesday's hearing at a state prison in San Diego County, the Associated Press news agency reported.

She has lodged a 53-page habeas corpus - a legal filing alleging unlawful detention - and requested that a judge rule the governor's intercession violated state law. 

At his last parole board hearing back in 2021, Sirhan reportedly told commissioners: "Over half a century has passed. That young impulsive kid I was does not exist anymore."

But he was not as articulate in his latest hearing, his lawyer said.

The Palestinian immigrant previously said he fired at Kennedy because he was enraged by his support for Israel, but Sirhan has also denied having any recollection of the killing.

He was convicted of first-degree murder for gunning down Kennedy, 42, in the kitchen of the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles on 5 June 1968. 

His older brother, President John F Kennedy, was assassinated in Dallas in 1963.

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