Status: 11/17/2021 9:58 p.m.
“Who Killed Malcolm X?” Is the title of a documentary that started a new investigation into the assassination attempt on the civil rights activist. Now – 56 years after the crime – the convictions of two men are to be overturned.
More than half a century after the fatal assassination attempt on US civil rights activist Malcolm X, two men convicted are to be exonerated. Prosecutor Cyrus Vance told the New York Times that the convictions against Muhammad A. Aziz and Khalil Islam should be overturned.
Both men were sentenced to life imprisonment in 1966. They spent around two decades in prison for a crime that, according to the new evidence, they would not have committed. “These men did not get the justice they deserved,” Vance is quoted as saying. “We recognize the mistake, the gravity of the mistake.”
He later announced on Twitter that his office, the Innocence Project group, which specializes in solving legal errors, and a law firm would overturn the convictions. Further details should follow on Thursday.
Documentary initiated an investigation
According to the New York Times, this was preceded by almost two years of investigations by the office of Vance Jr. and the lawyers for Aziz and Islam. The district attorney’s office publicly admitted that the documentary “Who Killed Malcolm X?” (“Who Killed Malcolm X?”) Had initiated considerations to reopen the case. The program traces the theory of researchers, according to which those convicted at the time were innocent and the real assassins escaped.
The new investigation found, according to the newspaper, that prosecutors, the FBI and the New York police withheld evidence following the murder of Malcolm X. This would probably have led to an acquittal for Aziz and Islam, then known as Norman 3X Butler and Thomas 15X Johnson. Aziz, now 83, was released from prison in 1985. Islam was set free in 1987 and died in 2009.
For the murder of Malcolm X in 1965, Thomas Hagan, alias Mujahid Abdul Halim, was also convicted the following year. This had admitted his guilt in the process, but described the other two men as innocent. The now 80-year-old was released in 2010. All those convicted had belonged to the nation of Islam, a Muslim black movement with which Malcolm X had broken off.
Witness supports alibi
Malcolm X was shot dead by three attackers on February 21, 1965 while performing in Harlem, New York. He was considered one of the most influential figures in the civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s. But it was not undisputed either, among other things because it considered the use of force to be lawful under certain circumstances.
In the murder case, Hagan identified two other men as shooters, but no one has yet been arrested. According to the New York Times report, the FBI is said to have been in possession of documents that indicated other suspects. A living witness also supported the alibi that Aziz had used since his trial – namely that he was at home with a leg injury at the time of the fatal shooting of Malcolm X.
The new investigation also revealed that prosecutors knew that undercover agents were in the ballroom when the civil rights activist was assassinated. But the judiciary never disclosed this. The police also knew that someone called the Daily News that day and gave the tip that Malcolm X should be murdered. “It wasn’t just an accident,” said Deborah Francois, Aziz and Islam’s attorney, of the New York Times. “That was the product of extreme and blatant official misconduct.”