The attorney for Sirhan Sirhan, who is serving a life sentence for the killing, said Saturday that the prosecution engaged in a massive cover-up by suppressing and altering evidence that led to Sirhan's conviction.

A Writ of Habeas Corpus would allow Sirhan to go before the court to challenge the legality of his imprisonment.

According to attorney Lawrence Teeter, the 149-page petition is supported by 102 exhibits and examples of evidence tampering.

He says, for example, a police photograph bearing the Sirhan case number document retrieval number depicts a different gun that the one introduced at the trial and that is currently in storage at the California State Archives.

Only a few months after the assassination, officers from the Los Angeles Police Department burned 2,410 photographs in a County General Hospital incinerator on orders from a lieutenant.

Teeter also says the bullet removed from Kennedy's neck during the autopsy was marked on its base "TN31" by the Los Angeles County coroner, but the bullet introduced at trial as the Kennedy neck bullet was marked "DW" "TN" on its base when examined by a court-appointed examiner in 1975.

About 50,000 documents and other materials gathered by police during their year-long investigation were publicly released in 1988, nearly 20 years after the senator, who was seeking the Democratic nomination for president, was gunned down.

At that time, it was discovered that in addition to the thousands of destroyed photographs, an unspent bullet taken from Sirhan's coat pocket, door frames and ceiling tiles allegedly used in calculating trajectories also were missing.