Sirhan Sirhan, the man convicted of assassinating former US Attorney General and then favorite for the 1968 Democratic presidential nomination Robert F. Kennedy, has been recommended for parole after more than five decades in prison, the Washington Post reports.
Now 77 years old, Sirhan was deemed no longer a threat to the public by a two member parole panel for the California State Department of Corrections. It was Sirhan’s 16th parole hearing. Surviving members of Kennedy’s, including his sons Donald and Robert Jr., contacted the parole commission with messages supporting Sirhan’s release.
“Over half a century has passed,” Sirhan told the panel, “and that young impulsive kid I was does not exist anymore…Sen. Kennedy was the hope of the world and I injured, and I harmed all of them and it pains me to experience that, the knowledge for such a horrible deed.”
A Jordanian citizen, the then-24-year-old Sirhan shot Kennedy twice in the head and once in the back after Kennedy had made a speech at the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles on June 5, 1968.