NY CITY AND STATE TO PAY $36M TO MEN EXONERATED IN MALCOLM X KILLING

This combination photo shows Muhammad Aziz, a suspect in the slaying of Malcolm X, after his arrest, in New York, on February 26, 1965, left, and Aziz outside court after his conviction in the killing of Malcolm X was vacated, on Thursday, November 18, 2021, in New York

Mon 31 October 2022:

The city and state of New York will pay $36 million to the two men whose convictions for the assassination of Malcolm X in 1965 were overturned last year.

“The tragedy of Malcolm X’s murder was felt all over the world, and compounded by the fact that it led to the convictions and imprisonment of two innocent, young, Black men in America,” their lawyer David Shanies said in an emailed statement to AFP on Sunday night.

TWO MEN CONVICTED IN KILLING OF MALCOLM X TO BE EXONERATED

Muhammad Aziz and Khalil Islam, the two men, have always maintained that they did not commit the murder.

Aziz, 84, had sought $40 million in damages after spending nearly two decades in prison and more than 55 years being wrongfully blamed in the case that raised concerns about racism in the criminal justice system. Aziz is a father of six children.

Islam, who died in 2009 at the age of 74, served more than 20 years in prison before being exonerated in November 2021. His estate had also filed a $40 million lawsuit.

“Today we acknowledge that injustice and take a modest step towards rectifying it,” said Shanies.

He confirmed a report from the New York Times that the city of New York will pay $26m to be split between 84-year-old Aziz and the family of Islam.

They were released in the mid-1980s, but it wasn’t until November 2021 that the New York State Supreme Court cleared their names completely, calling their convictions nearly a half-century ago “a failure of justice.”

The state government of New York will also pay five million dollars each, for a total of $36m in compensation.

Malcolm X gained national prominence as the voice of the Nation of Islam, exhorting Black people to claim their civil rights “by any means necessary.” His autobiography, written with Alex Haley, remains a classic work of modern American literature.

Near the end of Malcolm X’s life, he split with the Black Muslim organization and, after a trip to Mecca, started speaking about the potential for racial unity. It earned him the ire of some in the Nation of Islam, who saw him as a traitor.

For more than 50 years, the official record held that three members of the Black nationalist group Nation of Islam, which Malcolm X had recently renounced, shot the iconic 39-year-old leader in front of his wife and children as he approached the podium of a Harlem ballroom.

A man rushed the stage with a sawn-off shotgun and shot Malcolm once in the chest. Two more men with semi-automatic pistols charged at him, firing at him. With 21 gunshot wounds, he was pronounced dead at a nearby hospital.

SOURCE: INDEPENDENT PRESS AND NEWS AGENCIES

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