​A new parole request for Serhan Sirhan, the assassin of Robert Kennedy in 1968, was rejected on Wednesday by a special commission in California, AFP reports.

Sirhan, 78, has been in prison for more than fifty years, despite doubts about his responsibility for the murder, which deeply disturbed American political life.

Therefore, Serhan was denied a new request after numerous requests in this regard.

In August 2021, another commission gave the green light for his release, but in January of the following year, California Governor Gavin Newsom opposed the decision.

The Democratic governor then noted that the detainee still poses a “threat to public safety” and cited several factors to explain his decision, including Sirhan’s refusal “to plead guilty to this crime.”

On April 17, 1969, Serhan was found guilty of the assassination of New York Senator John Fitzgerald Kennedy’s younger brother, and he was also killed.

Robert “Bobby” Kennedy was campaigning for the Democratic presidential nomination when he was shot at the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles.

In 1972, Sirhan, who was sentenced to death for the first time, was commuted to life imprisonment.

Doubts about Sirhan’s guilt have remained since the trial. The hearing heard that Bobby Kennedy was hit behind the right ear by a bullet fired at close range, but Sirhan was in front of him, witnesses said.

It was later revealed that 13 shots had been fired on the night of the drama, and Sirhan’s gun had a capacity of only eight rounds.

Doubts about the verdict prompted Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to visit Sirhan in prison.

“I left because I was curious and concerned about the evidence I saw,” he told the Washington Post in 2018. “I was worried that the wrong person could be convicted of my father’s murder,” he added.

Bobby Jr. and his younger brother Douglas Kennedy supported Sirhan’s 2021 release.

A Palestinian immigrant, Sirhan initially justified his crime by saying that Robert Kennedy supported the sale of military aircraft to Israel.

During his 2016 parole application, Sirhan testified that he had too much to drink on the night of the crime and that he wished “nothing had happened.”

He also assured that the testimony at the trial was given at the suggestion of a lawyer who gave him wrong advice and convinced him of his guilt.