Man acquitted of Malcolm X’s murder sues US over his conviction

A former member of the Nation of Islam who was acquitted in the murder of Malcolm of civil rights.

The lawsuit filed by the man, Muhammad A. Aziz, who served more than two decades in prison and was acquitted of the murder in 2021, accuses the FBI of withholding evidence that suggested he played no role in the death of Malcolm X in 1965. leading figure in the historic social movement to empower disenfranchised black Americans.

Mr. Aziz’s lawsuit, which names at least 19 agency officials and seeks $40 million in damages, alleges that top officials, including J. Edgar Hoover, engaged in a “pattern and practice” of “causing miscarriages of justice’. Mr. Hoover, who is credited with ordering the surveillance and harassment of civil rights leaders, led the agency for nearly half a century until his death in 1972.

A companion lawsuit was filed on behalf of the estate of Khalil Islam, who was also convicted of the crime and died in 2009, more than a decade before his acquittal.

Mr. Aziz, 85, and Mr. Islam’s estate previously received settlements totaling $36 million from New York City and the state to resolve lawsuits over the role played by the police and the Manhattan district attorney’s office played in their wrongful convictions.

The mystery surrounding Malcolm X’s assassination deepened when Mr Aziz and Mr Islam were acquitted. Congress has long resisted calls from historians and activists for an investigation, with key details of the case hidden in FBI files.

David Shanies, a lawyer for Mr. Aziz and Mr. Islam’s estate, said he hoped the trials would reveal long-held secrets about Malcolm X’s assassination, which is now officially an unsolved crime.

“Why would the FBI deliberately cover up the evidence of these men’s innocence and knowingly allow them to take the blame?” he said. “What were they protecting?”

Representatives for the FBI and Justice Department did not immediately respond to emails sent Thursday seeking comment on the lawsuits.

Malcolm Mr. Aziz and Mr. Islam were hastily arrested and, despite no physical evidence and conflicting witness statements, convicted of first-degree murder.

By the time of their 1966 trial, the FBI had amassed an “enormous” amount of evidence that cast doubt on the men’s guilt and pointed to the real perpetrators, according to the lawsuits filed in federal court in Manhattan.

But the recent investigation that exonerated them, conducted by their attorneys, the Manhattan district attorney’s office and the Innocence Project, found that the FBI deliberately withheld exculpatory evidence from police and prosecutors, in part on explicit instruction from Mr. Vacuum cleaner.

The investigation also accused the bureau of ordering witnesses to the murder not to tell police investigators that they were FBI informants.

One of the gunmen, Mujahid Abdul Halim, who was caught trying to flee the ballroom, confessed during the trial, saying the other two men were innocent and that he did not know them. He later gave up the names of the men he said were his co-conspirators when Mr. Aziz unsuccessfully appealed his conviction in 1977.

Instead, Mr. Aziz and Mr. Islam each spent more than 20 years in prison and suffered the stigma of being known as Malcolm X’s killers after their release in the mid-1980s.

The re-examination found key evidence in the possession of the police that corroborated Mr. Halim’s account of the killing, including the names of the other gunmen and two additional conspirators, their ties to a mosque in Newark and where they had been. sitting in the ballroom.

Scholars had unearthed some of the evidence many years earlier, and an undercover officer testifying in an unrelated case had shared an account that matched parts of Mr. Halim’s.

A crucial new discovery was a memo from Mr. Hoover dated April 13, 1965, in which agents were instructed not to reveal detailed descriptions the agency had obtained from its informants describing the man who fired the fatal shot.

The descriptions involved William Bradley, a former Marine gunner and lieutenant at the Newark Mosque, on whom the agency maintained “an extensive file,” according to the lawsuit. He denied any involvement in the murder and died in 2018.

Among the officials named in Mr. Aziz’s lawsuit is Steven Edwards, a special agent who was recorded falsely telling prosecutors who handled Mr. Aziz’s 1977 appeal that the FBI had no evidence to support of Mr Halim’s statement. The lawsuit also names August J. Micek, the liaison to the New York Police Department’s Counterintelligence Unit, who allegedly prevented investigators from having information about Mr. Bradley in a 1965 FBI report .

In addition to monetary damages, the lawsuit also seeks to expose Mr. Bradley’s possible ties to the FBI. According to court papers, documents discovered during the reinvestigation indicated a “significant ongoing relationship” between him and the FBI.

Lawyers also want to know what led investigators to Mr. Aziz and Mr. Islam. Both men were lieutenants in the Harlem mosque that Malcolm X had led before his secession from the Nation of Islam. They have long said that they were at home with their wives on the day of the murder.

Mr. Aziz had a leg injury from a beating by police, and he had taken three calls. The last call came from the mosque in Harlem around 3 p.m

Malcolm X, the caller said, had been shot.