Petition To OAS: Sirhan wrongfully convicted in 1968 RFKennedy Murder

By Andrew Kreig, J.D., M.S.L., attorney and journalist. Director of JIP, Member of the Editorial Board, and Associate Editor of The Indicter Magazine. Historic petition to OAS seeks retrial or hearing. Famed attorney, noted author, and human rights advocate Dr. William F. Pepper announced July 17 that he is filing a petition to the […]

By Andrew Kreig, J.D., M.S.L., attorney and journalist. Director of JIP,

Member of the Editorial Board, and Associate Editor of The Indicter Magazine.

Historic petition to OAS seeks retrial or hearing.

Famed attorney, noted author, and human rights advocate Dr. William F. Pepper announced July 17 that he is filing a petition to the Organization of American States (OAS) seeking justice for his imprisoned client Sirhan B. Sirhan.

The filing describes Sirhan (shown upon his arrest) as wrongfully convicted of the 1968 assassination of Pepper’s friend, Robert F. Kennedy, the late New York U.S. senator and Democratic presidential candidate. Pepper presents his evidence and arguments at a 10 a.m. news conference on July 20 at the National Press Club, located at 529 14th St., NW, Washington, DC.

Seeking a new trial for Sirhan or an evidentiary hearing, Pepper’s petition against the U.S. government is being filed on July 19, 2017 with the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR), an OAS body. The filing alleges that the California and U.S. justice systems violated Sirhan’s right to a fair trial, as required under the OAS Declaration of the Rights and Duties of Man. By treaty, the IACHR may review U.S. cases and those from 34 other nations when domestic remedies have been exhausted.

“Among the many abuses that I have discovered,” said Pepper, “the petition describes how Sirhan’s late defense counsel, Grant Cooper, was compromised by a secretly pending felony indictment. It posed a major conflict that deprived Sirhan of effective counsel. Cooper conducted no independent investigation. He explicitly accepted his client’s guilt and the state’s case without real challenge.”

“According to many witnesses,” Pepper continued, “additional shots were fired by a second assailant during the attack on June 5, 1968 after Kennedy won California’s Democratic primary for that year’s presidential race.”

Among those supporting the petition are Paul Schrade, an RFK friend who was shot by Sirhan, and the noted forensic pathologist Cyril H. Wecht, M.D., Dr. Cyril Wecht J.D., shown at right in a file photo in his lab and as amplified in an announcement today below.

Wecht, a consultant, widely published author, and medical school professor, numbers among his professional leadership posts many medical and civic groups, including chairmanship of Citizens Against Political Assassinations (CAPA), a co-sponsor of the news conference and petition, as is the Justice Integrity Project.

Paul Schrade Schrade (shown being revived at the scene in Los Angeles after being shot by Sirhan in the head) unsuccessfully begged a California parole commission in February 2016 to free Sirhan as innocent of killing Kennedy.

Dr. Thomas Noguchi, the then-Los Angeles County medical examiner (shown at right), is among those who have cited evidence that Kennedy was killed from behind. Sirhan was in front of the senator firing shots, one of which hit Schrade in the forehead.

Schrade’s reaction to the parole board’s summary denial of parole for Sirhan, 73, last year is shown below in an Associated Press pool photo of the hearing, from which other photographers were barred.

Paul Schrade Associated Press pool Sirhan became eligible for release on parole in the early 1980s because he has been a model prisoner according to virtually every account. But California authorities denied parole last year. That meant that Sirhan, now 73, will not be eligible again for review for four more years.

The Justice Integrity Project will post on its website the petition and sample expert statements, and is introducing Pepper both at the news conference and at a dinner at the press club the previous evening, beginning at 6:30 p.m. The public is welcome to attend the lecture and optional “Dutch Treat” dinner organized by the McClendon Group speaker society. Details are reported here: RFK, MLK Friend To Speak July 19 In DC About Media Flaws, Failures.

About Dr. William F. Pepper

Dr. William F. Pepper is an American lawyer and English barrister. A 1960s friend of Robert F. Kennedy and the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., he believes that both of their accused killers were wrongly accused for political reasons. His books include the acclaimed The Plot To Kill King (2016), third in a series on the King assassination. It contains the evidence that Pepper first presented in a civil trial in Memphis in 1999. He won that trial, which exonerated James Earl Ray.

Pepper was Kennedy’s Westchester County campaign chairman in the 1964 U.S. Senate race and became convinced of Sirhan’s innocence in 2007. In a separate event at the National Press Club on July 19, Pepper signs books and speaks at 7 p.m. about democratic values before the Sarah McClendon speaker society (chaired by the late newswoman’s former colleague John Edward Hurley), preceded by an optional “Dutch treat” dinner. The public is welcome.

About the Justice Integrity Project, Citizens Against Political Assassinations, and The Indicter

The Justice Integrity Project (www.justice-integrity.org) reports about suppressed news. Its editor Andrew Kreig will introduce Dr. Pepper. Kreig is a volunteer board member for two other event co-sponsors: Citizens Against Political Assassinations (CAPA) (www.capa-us.org) and The Indicter (http://theindicter.com), a Europe-based human rights magazine for which Kreig serves as an associate editor. ##

Coming next: More experts speak out as below!

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. with quote LATEST.jpg

ROBERT F. KENNEDY JUNIOR

Image caption/credit: Bobby Kennedy Jr. speaking to journalist Charlie Rose onstage, alongside Bobby’s youngest sister Rory Kennedy, at the AT&T Performing Arts Center in Dallas, Texas on January 11, 2013 in anticipation of that year’s coming 50th anniversary of the assassination of his uncle, U.S. President John F. Kennedy in Dallas (photo by Associated Press/Tony Gutierrez).

Quote: Excerpt from Page 271 of RFK Junior’s 2016 book, Framed – Why Michael Skakel Spent Over A Decade In Prison For A Murder He Didn’t Commit.

This article was first published in the Justice Integrity Project.

Image on top, and featured image in The Indicter Magazine cover, depicting Sirhan Sirhan (at right) in Los Angeles, 1968. (Photo: Anonymous/AP)

The author

Atttorney Andrew Kreig, J.D., M.S.L., is a Washington, DC-based author, investigative reporter, attorney, and non-profit executive who founded the Justice Integrity Project (www.justice-integrity.org) to expose threats to democracy and human rights. Active in researching political prosecutions, torture, illegal surveillance, and media bias, his most recent book is Presidential Puppetry: Obama, Romney and their Masters (www.presidentialpuppetry.com). Andrew Kreig began his career as a reporter with the Hartford Courant, America’s oldest (1764) newspaper still in publication, and obtained law degrees from Yale and the University of Chicago. He has since written and spoken widely for mainstream and alternative audiences. These include appearances on more than a hundred commercial broadcast stations, lectures on five continents, and human rights reports for the Huffington Post and The Professors’ Blog.

Follow the author on Twitter at @AndrewKreig

Contact the author Andrew Kreig