Of the three men who murdered Malcolm X, two were Set to clear Their lawyers and Manhattan’s top prosecutor said on Wednesday that they have maintained their innocence since the killing of one of America’s most powerful civil rights fighters in 1965.
Their lawyer, the innocence plan, and civil rights lawyer David Shanis said that a reinvestigation that lasted nearly two years found that the authorities had been involved in the investigation of the 83-year-old Mohamed Aziz and the late Khalil Iss. In Ram’s trial, evidence conducive to the defense was concealed.
“The assassination of Malcolm X is a historic event that requires rigorous investigation and prosecution, but it turned out to be one of the most blatant miscalculations I have ever seen,” said Barry Sheikh, co-founder of the Innocence Project. The statement said.
Malcolm X’s family issued a letter accusing the FBI and the New York Police Department police of being behind the activists’ deaths
Vance later said on Twitter that his office would work with the man’s lawyer to ask the judge on Thursday to dismiss the conviction.
“These people don’t get the justice they deserve,” District Attorney Cyrus Vance Jr. told the New York Times, which first reported the development.
On March 15, 1964, in New York City, New York, civil rights leader Malcolm X attended a meeting on E.117 Street in Harlem to prepare for a school boycott. (Photo by Michael Oaks Archives/Getty Images).
Michael Oaks Archives/Getty Images
As one of the most controversial and high-profile figures in the civil rights era, Malcolm X gained fame as the chief spokesperson of the Islamic State. He announced the message of the black Muslim organization at the time: racial separatism is the path to self-realization the way. He is known for urging blacks to claim civil rights “in any necessary way”, and calling whites “blue-eyed demons,” and he later condemned racism.
About a year before his death, he split from an Islamic country, and later made a pilgrimage to Mecca, returning with a new perspective on the potential for ethnic unity. Some people in Islamic countries consider him a traitor.
On February 21, 1965, at the age of 39, he was shot dead when he started speaking at the Audubon Ballroom in Harlem.
In March 1966, Aziz, Islam and the third man Mujahid Abdul Halim (Mujahid Abdul Halim)-also known as Talmadge Hayer and Thomas Hagan-Convicted of murder and sentenced to life imprisonment.
Muhammad Aziz was the suspect in the murder of Malcolm X. After he was arrested in New York on February 26, 1965, he was escorted by detectives at the police headquarters. Aziz is one of the two men convicted in the assassination of Malcolm X. According to a news report on Wednesday, November 17, 2021, they will be cleared in more than half a century. The prosecutor now says the authorities have concealed it. Evidence of the killing of the civil rights leader.
File photo/Associated Press
Hagen said he was one of the three gunmen who shot Malcolm X, but he testified that neither Aziz nor Islam was involved. The two men, known at the time as Norman 3X Butler and Thomas 15X Johnson, insisted throughout that they were innocent, and provided an alibi in the 1966 trial. There is no physical evidence linking them to crime.
“Thomas 15 Johnson and Norman 3X Butler have nothing to do with this crime,” Hagen said in a 1977 sworn statement.
Hagen was released on parole in 2010. On Wednesday, someone left a message on his phone number when he was released on parole.
He determined that the other two men were gunmen, but no one else was arrested.
According to the New York Times, the re-investigation revealed that the FBI had documents pointing to other suspects. A witness who was still alive supported Aziz’s alibi that he was injured in his leg at home during the shooting.
The newspaper stated that the witness had never interviewed the authorities before, using only the initials “JM” as the name. He said that he spoke to Aziz on the latter’s home phone on the day of the murder.
In addition, the review found that the prosecutor knew but did not disclose that plainclothes policemen were in the dance hall when the gunfire broke out. The police knew that someone called the New York Daily News earlier that day and said that Malcolm X would be killed.
The New York Police Department and the FBI said on Wednesday that they have fully cooperated in the re-investigation, but declined to comment further.
Aziz was released in 1985. Islam was released two years later and died in 2009. The two continued to pressure to clear their names.
“I didn’t kill Malcolm X,” Aziz said at a press conference in 1998 when the Nation of Islam appointed him to manage the mosque where the killed leader was preaching.
Ten years later, Islam said at a gathering in a bookstore in Harlem: “I need to be acquitted. I have to spend 22 years in prison.”
After their release, he and Aziz lived under the cloud of Malcolm X’s so-called Assassins.
“Excusing these people is a just and well-deserved affirmation of their true character,” Shanis said in a statement. Deborah Francois, the legal counsel in his office, called the convictions “the product of serious official misconduct and the criminal justice system’s unfavorable effects on people of color.”
The Manhattan District Attorney’s Office has publicly admitted that after Netflix broadcasts the documentary series “Who killed Malcolm X?”, it is considering a retrial of the case. last year. This series explores a theory of scholars that these two men are innocent and some real murderers have escaped.
© 2021 Associated Press
