Thirty-six million dollars: this is the sum, divided equally, that the city and the State of New York will pay for the two African-Americans exonerated in 2021 after more than twenty years in prison each, for the assassination in 1965 of Malcolm X, their lawyer revealed on Sunday October 30, confirming information from the New York Times.
“The tragedy of the murder of Malcolm X was felt around the world and compounded by the fact that it led to the conviction and imprisonment of two young, innocent black men in America”replied in an email to Agence France-Presse (AFP) their lawyer David Shanies. “This injustice is now recognized and a modest step has been taken to correct it”added the representative of Muhammad Aziz, 84, and the family of Khalil Islam, who died in 2009.
The lawyer confirmed that the city of New York would pay a total of 26 million dollars, in addition to the 5 million granted to each party by the State of New York. In the New York Times, David Shanies specifies that the 36 million will be divided equally between Muhammad Aziz and the heirs of Khalil Islam.
42 years in prison for two
In November 2021, the New York State Supreme Court had legally cleared MM. Aziz and Islam, calling it“failure of justice” their conviction more than half a century ago for the February 21, 1965 assassination in Harlem of civil rights icon Malcolm X.
Muhammad Aziz and Khalil Islam, who served 42 years in prison between them, have always maintained their innocence. The third convict Mujahid Abdul Halim – released in 2010 – admitted at the time to having shot Malcolm X and exonerated his two co-defendants, but in vain until 2020 and the reopening of the case by the justice of New York .
A twist made possible by the broadcast in February 2020 of a documentary on Netflix (« Who Killed Malcolm X ? »), renewing doubts about the presence of MM. Aziz and Islam at the scene of the assassination. After months of a retrial, then-Manhattan prosecutor Cyrus Vance teamed up with the two men’s attorneys and an organization, « The Innocence Project »which fights against miscarriages of justice, to file a motion of annulment in the New York Supreme Court.
In November 2021, live on television and to applause, Prosecutor Vance presented the « excuses » US judicial authorities for “decades of injustice” and “unacceptable violations of the law and public trust”. In court, he had “acknowledged the seriousness of this error” judiciary, without expanding on the rumors concerning the troubled role played at the time by the federal police (FBI) and that of New York.