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Celebrity website TMZ, citing unnamed sources, was first to
report that Sirhan, 75, had been stabbed.
Replying to a request for confirmation that Sirhan was wounded,
Jeffrey Callison, a spokesman for the California Department of
Corrections and Rehabilitation, said an inmate had been stabbed
at the Richard J. Donovan Correctional Facility near San Diego.
The wounded inmate was taken to a hospital outside the prison
and is listed in stable condition, Callison said in a statement,
and a suspect has been identified in the assault.
In a follow-up email, Callison declined to identify the wounded
inmate as Sirhan, citing department policy on not naming
victims.
A jury in 1969 found Sirhan guilty of assassinating Kennedy the
previous year by opening fire with a .22-caliber pistol into a
small crowd surrounding the Democratic candidate in the pantry
of the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles.
Kennedy, a U.S. senator from New York, was hit three times and
died the next day. He was later buried at Arlington Cemetery,
near his brother, President John F. Kennedy, who was
assassinated in 1963.
Sirhan has said he fired at Kennedy because he was enraged by
his support for Israel.
He was sentenced to death, but the sentence was changed to life
in prison after California banned the death penalty for a time.
(Reporting by Alex Dobuzinskis; Editing by Clarence Fernandez)
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