LOS ANGELES (AFP) - The man convicted of shooting dead Robert F. Kennedy in a 1968 assassination that rocked the United States was granted parole on Friday (Aug 27).

A parole board in San Diego voted to release Sirhan Sirhan on his 16th attempt at getting out of prison.

Kennedy, the younger brother of slain president John F. Kennedy, was campaigning for the Democratic presidential nomination to follow in the family footsteps when he was gunned down in a Los Angeles hotel.

His murder came just months after the killing of Black civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr, and as a divided America was deep in an unpopular war in Vietnam.

The California parole board vote on Friday does not mean that Sirhan, now 77, will automatically be released.

The decision is subject to a three-month review, and then ultimately passes to Governor Gavin Newsom, a Democrat who faces a recall vote in September.