Opinion: Sirhan’s Bad Luck

Sirhan Sirhan had never been a TV buff and had never bothered to keep a television in his cell over the years. But a couple of days before Sept. 11, an inmate friend of his was being released and offered Sirhan his TV, telling him he could pass it along if he still lacked interest in watching it. So Sirhan had a TV set in his cell for what appeared to be the first time ever, and one day that week, he also found himself colder than usual after taking a shower in the California State Prison-Corcoran, where he is confined. He decided to wrap a towel around his head to keep it warm, and was watching the round-the-clock post-disaster coverage when a passing guard noticed the towel and the TV and made the incredible assumption that not only was Sirhan Sirhan suddenly a Muslim, but that his interest in the news coverage meant he must have had a hand in plotting the Sept. 11 attacks — even though he’d been sitting in prison since the early ‘70s. “He was thrown into solitary confinement for the next year until we were finally able to prove he was innocent of their claims and get him out. But now the guards have poisoned the thoughts of other prisoners against him, and they still think he is a Muslim and he’s afraid they’ll try to kill him,” says Munir Sirhan. “He’s afraid to leave for anything except a shower twice a week because he believes the guards either won’t protect him or will be out for him themselves for filing complaints about this situation. He wants to transfer to another prison but they won’t let him.” Munir Sirhan also claims that during that year in isolation, all of his brother’s attorney-client conversations, which are legally supposed to be private, were thoroughly monitored.