Man exonerated over Malcolm X assassination sues New York City for $40m

A man exonerated over the assassination of Malcolm X has sued New York City for $40m (£33.8m) for wrongful conviction, which saw him spend two decades in prison.

In a lawsuit filed Thursday, Muhammad Aziz said being wrongly accused for 55 years of killing the civil rights leader had caused him and his family “immense and irreparable” damage.

Mr Aziz, Khalil Islam and a third accused Mujahid Abdul Halim were convicted in March 1966 for shooting dead the Nation of Islam spokesperson and civil rights activist the year before in Harlem. Islam died in 2009.

For decades, there were questions about the fairness of the conviction of Mr Aziz and Islam, and the two men had always insisted they were innocent and had been framed by the authorities. The third accused, Halim, had admitted during trial that he took part in the killing but said his co-defendants weren’t involved.

After a two-year investigation, both their convictions were reversed in November 2021 by a court in Manhattan after it was found that crucial evidence regarding the duo’s innocence was hidden by the FBI and NYPD during the trial, their attorneys said.

It was found that no physical evidence linked Aziz or Islam to the crime scene or murder, and the two had alibis backed by witness testimony.

Mr Aziz is married and has six children.

The lawyer for both plaintiffs, Deborah Francois, said the men “got a small measure of justice when their convictions were vacated”.

“But we want to hold government officials accountable for misconduct that led to their wrongful convictions and decades of living with the stigma of being labeled Malcolm X’s murderers,” Ms Francois said on Thursday.

A similar $40m lawsuit has been filed in Brooklyn federal court by the estate of Islam, who was 74 when he died in 2009.

New York City was reviewing the lawsuits, former police captain and mayor Eric Adams said in a statement.

The overturning of the two men’s convictions is “the just outcome” in the case where police misconduct is alleged, he admitted.

Malcom X was a prominent civil rights advocate, who was assassinated at a New York City ballroom in front of his family at the age of 39 in 1965.

Last year, family members of the civil rights advocate published a letter publicly by a deceased police officer wherein he stated that the New York police department and FBI were behind the 1965 killing of the famed Black activist and civil rights advocate.

The NYPD had responded by saying that it was reviewing the matter.