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Sarhan Sarhan

Personal Info

  • Country of residence: United States
  • Gender: Male
  • Born in: 1944
  • Age: 79
  • Curriculum vitae :

Information

Sirhan Bishara Sirhan (March 19, 1944) is a Palestinian Christian with Jordanian citizenship who assassinated US Senator Robert Kennedy in Los Angeles, California, on June 5, 1968; Kennedy died the next day in hospital from his injuries. Sirhan was convicted of murder and is serving a life sentence at the Richard Donovan Correctional Facility in San Diego County, California. On August 27, 2021, Sarhan was granted conditional release, but the decision does not guarantee his release. The decision will be reviewed by officials of the California Parole Commission within a period of 90 days, and then sent to the governor of the state for a decision within a period of 30 days.

Sirhan was born in Jerusalem to an Arab Christian family. He attended a Lutheran school. In 1989, Sirhan told journalist David Frost, "My only connection with Robert Kennedy was his sole support of Israel and his deliberate attempt to send those 50 fighter-bombers into Israel to harm the Palestinians." Some scholars believe that the assassination was the first major incident of political violence in the United States stemming from the Arab-Israeli conflict in the Middle East.

Sirhan was born into a Palestinian Christian Arab family in Jerusalem, Mandatory Palestine. As a child growing up in the West Bank, Sarhan was traumatized by the violence he witnessed in the Arab-Israeli conflict, including the death of his older brother, who was run over by a Jordanian military vehicle that was swerving away from Israeli gunfire.

When Sirhan was twelve years old, his family immigrated to the United States, moving briefly to New York and then to California. In Altadena, he attended Elliott Junior High School, followed by John Muir High School and Pasadena City College, both in Pasadena. Sirhan's father, Bishara, was described as a strict man who beat his children harshly. Shortly after the family moved to California, Bishara returned alone to the Middle East. Sirhan moved to Koruna to train to become a jockey while working in a stable, but lost his job and gave up the chase after suffering a head injury in a racing accident.

Sirhan never became a US citizen, instead retaining his Jordanian citizenship.

Assassination of Robert Kennedy
At approximately 12:15 a.m. PDT on June 5, 1968, Sirhan fired a .22-caliber revolver at US Senator Robert Kennedy and the crowd surrounding him at the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles shortly after Kennedy had finished giving a speech to supporters on the main ballroom in Los Angeles. the hotel. Authors George Plimpton, Jimmy Breslin, Pete Hamill, and former professional soccer player Rosie Greer were among the many men who subdued and disarmed Sirhan after a struggle.

Kennedy was shot three times—one in the head and two in the back—with a fourth bullet passing through his jacket. He died approximately 26 hours later in hospital. Five other people were also shot at the scene, who “recovered later.”

In a 2018 interview with The Washington Post, Robert Kennedy Jr. said that he had traveled to the Richard Donovan Correctional Facility in California to meet with Sirhan, and that after a relatively lengthy conversation (and with details he would not reveal), he believed that Sirhan did not kill his father and that another gunman was involved.

 

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