California’s parole board voted Friday to recommend parole for Sirhan Sirhan, the Palestinian Jordanian who shot and killed Senator Robert Kennedy in a hotel kitchen in Los Angeles in 1968. Kennedy was the leading contender for the Democratic nomination for president at the time. An assassin’s bullets felled Kennedy’s brother, President John F. Kennedy, less than five years earlier. In 1989, the Jerusalem-born Sirhan told interviewer David Frost that his motivation for killing Kennedy was the senator’s pro-Israel views. “My only connection with Robert Kennedy was his sole support of Israel and his deliberate attempt to send those 50 [fighter jet] bombers to Israel to obviously do harm to the Palestinians,” Sirhan said. Six surviving children of Sen. Kennedy expressed their opposition to releasing Sirhan: “It is a recommendation we intend to challenge every step of the way,” they said. Two Kennedy children – Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Douglas Kennedy – support parole for their father’s killer. The California Board of Parole Hearings will review the decision in 90 days, after which Gov. Gavin Newsom will have the final say.
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