Lawyers of Sirhan Sirhan, the convicted killer of former senator Robert F. Kennedy, are seeking his release and a new trial claiming he did not shoot the victim.

Attorneys William F. Pepper and Laurie D. Dusek also asked the U.S. District Court in California for a new trial claiming Sirhan was hypnotised to shoot Kennedy at a hotel kitchen in 1968 because he could not recall the incident and a fraud was committed during his trial in 1969 because the bullet that killed the victim was not the one presented to the court as evidence.

Pepper and Dusek said Sirhan is innocent of the crime based on the new evidences.

Sirhan, now 67, is a Christian Palestinian born in Jerusalem. He has been serving a life sentence for 42 years.
Sirhan's lawyers failed to secure his parole from Pleasant Valley State Prison in Coalinga, California in March.

In the shooting of Kennedy on June 5, 1968, Sirhan also wounded five other people inside the kitchen service pantry of the former Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles. Kennedy was hit in the neck and body and died the next day.

Based on an analysis of a recently discovered audiotape of the shooting, there were eight gunshots from Sirhan's gun and another five gunshots from another gun indicating a crossfire and the presence a second shooter.

The audiotape belongs to freelance newspaper reporter Stanislaw Pruszynsk, who was 12 metres from the crime scene. It is the only recording of the gunshots during the incident and was found in 2004 by CNN's Brad Johnson.

Sound analysts Spence Whitehead and Philip Van Praag examined the audiotape and concluded that 13 shots were fired, including eight from Sirhan's Iver-Johnson handgun.

Pepper also cited witnesses' testimonies that Sirhan was in front of Kennedy but the trajectory of the bullets that hit the former presidential candidate indicated they were fired from his back.

As to why Sirhan could not recall the shooting, Pepper said in the filing that he was hypno-programmed to shoot Kennedy and forget what he did, a technique used by the CIA.

Hypno-programming expert Daniel Brown from the Harvard Medical School interviewed Sirhan about the incident several times from 2008 to 2010. Sirhan told Brown he was in a shooting range firing at circular targets. Brown believes Sirhan was hypno-programmed to cause the distraction so a second gunman can shoot Kennedy.

Brown's findings were presented during the parole hearing on Sirhan but it failed to convince the prison authorities to release him.

Prosecutors said Sirhan's motive for the killing was to prevent him from sending jet fighters to Israel. But his lawyers said this was pure speculation.