California Gov. Gavin Newsom denied Parole on Thursday for Sirhan Bishara Sarhan, the assassin of Sen. Robert F. Kennedy.
Sirhan found in a panel of two people Suitable for parole in August, Employees of the California Parole Board had 120 days to review the decision, and the governor had 30 more days to approve, reject, or modify it.
Newsom explained his decision to reject the parole board’s recommendation in an editorial Published by Los Angeles Times,
“After carefully reviewing the case, including records in the California State Archives, I have determined that Sirahan has not developed the accountability and insight necessary to support his safe release in the community,” Newsom wrote. “I must withdraw Sirhan’s parole grant.”
He further added that even though Sirhan is 77 years old and decades have passed, he is “a strong icon of political violence.”
“He doesn’t understand, let alone the skills to manage, the complex risks of his self-made notoriety,” Newsom said. “They cannot be safely released from prison because they have not reduced their risk of promoting further political violence.”
this was it Sirhan had sought parole for the 16th time Kennedy, 42, in the kitchen of the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles on June 5, 1968, following his sentencing for the murder.
Kennedy, who was celebrating his victory in the state’s Democratic presidential primary, died the next day.
The Kennedy family issued a statement thanking Newsom. He said that while he supports parole for prisoners who have shown genuine remorse and reformation, Kennedy’s widow and children do not believe it applied to Sirhan.
“Instead of grief, this prisoner points to what he sees on the clock, instead of what he knows in his heart, believing that time is enough to pass,” his statement said. His statement said. “This is not enough, and not enough time has been given to justify parole for a person who lacks thorough insight into his pre-planned political assassination.”
He said the pain of reviving the murder, partly because of Sirhan’s repeated attempts on parole, “is simply unbearable.”
Christian Sirhan, a Palestinian-born Jordanian who had opposed Kennedy’s support for Israel, was caught with a gun in his hand, but he has maintained for years That he doesn’t remember shooting Kennedy. He was initially sentenced to death; The sentence was commuted to life imprisonment after California banned the death penalty.
The Los Angeles County District Attorney’s office isn’t the first to oppose Sirhan’s latest attempt at independence.
But Kennedy’s widow, Ethel Kennedy and other family members argued against releasing her,
“Bobby believed that we should work to ‘tame the barbarism of man and soften the life of the world’.” He wanted to end the war in Vietnam and bring people together to build a better, stronger country. More than anything, he wanted to be a good father and a loving husband,” Ethel Kennedy said in a statement in September.
“Our family and our country have suffered an irreparable loss due to the inhumanity of one person. We believe in the gentleness that spared his life, but in controlling his act of violence, he should not be given an opportunity to terrorize him again,” she concluded by saying: “He should not be paroled. needed.”
In a separate statement, Kennedy’s children urged parole board staff, the full board and the governor to “reverse” the parole recommendation.
Doha Madani Contribution,