Assassin of Robert F. Kennedy granted parole

The man convicted of shooting dead Robert F. Kennedy in a 1968 assassination that rocked the United States was granted parole, report agencies.

A parole board in San Diego on Saturday voted to release Sirhan Sirhan on his 16th attempt at getting out of prison.

Sirhan Sirhan, now 77, has been behind bars for five decades – despite doubts that he fired the shots that likely changed the course of US politics.

Mr Kennedy, the younger brother of slain president John F. Kennedy, was campaigning for the Democratic nomination when he was gunned down in a Los Angeles hotel.

His murder came just months after the killing of Black civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr, and as a divided America was deep in an unpopular war in Vietnam.

Sirhan was convicted and sentenced to death in 1969 after pleading guilty.

His death sentence was commuted to life imprisonment several years later.

But doubts soon surfaced that he was actually responsible for Bobby Kennedy’s death, with claims that there could have been a second gunman in the Ambassador Hotel on 5 June 1968.

His murder came just months after the killing of black civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr, and as a divided America was deep in an unpopular war in Vietnam.

Mr Kennedy had given a speech at the hotel after winning California’s Democratic presidential primary.

On a walkabout in the kitchen where he met staff, he was shot, as were several other people in his entourage, among them Paul Schrade, who took a bullet to the head.

Mr Schrade, along with Mr Kennedy’s then-14-year-old son, have since campaigned for Sirhan’s release, saying the evidence against him does not stack up.

“It is a good decision,” Mr Schrade said yesterday.

“I’m really grateful to the parole board for giving Sirhan the chance to go home.”