M.e convictions of two men are overturned more than 55 years after the assassination of US civil rights activist Malcolm X. As the New York prosecutor Cyrus Vance announced on Wednesday, the convictions against Muhammad A. Aziz and Khalil Islam are to be annulled. Both men were sentenced to life imprisonment in 1966.
“These men haven’t gotten the justice they deserved,” Vance told the New York Times. “We recognize the error, the severity of the error.”
According to the newspaper, Manhattan prosecutors and lawyers for the two men conducted a 22-month investigation into the case. They found that prosecutors, the Federal FBI and the New York police withheld evidence after the murder of Malcolm X, which at the time would have presumably led to an acquittal for Aziz and Islam.
Aziz, now 83, was released from prison in 1985. Islam was set free in 1987 and died in 2009. For the murder of Malcolm X in 1965, Thomas Hagan, alias Mujahid Abdul Halim, was also convicted the following year. This had admitted his guilt in the process, but described the other two men as innocent. The now 80-year-old was released in 2010.
The case was reopened after the Netflix documentary
All those convicted had belonged to the nation of Islam, a Muslim black movement with which Malcolm X had broken off. The civil rights activist was shot dead by three attackers on February 21, 1965 while performing in Harlem, New York.
The re-investigation into the case began after the Netflix documentary “Who Killed Malcolm X?” Prosecutor Vance announced a press conference for Thursday.
Malcolm X was one of the most influential figures in the civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s. But it was not undisputed either, among other things because it considered the use of force to be lawful under certain circumstances. Director Spike Lee created a cinematic monument for him in 1992 with the drama “Malcolm X” with Denzel Washington in the leading role.
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