Malcolm X speaks at a news conference at the Theresa Hotel in New York on May 21, 1964. Two of the three men convicted of his 1965 murder will be cleared the following Thursday. while insisting for years that they were not guilty.
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Malcolm X speaks at a news conference at the Theresa Hotel in New York on May 21, 1964. Two of the three men convicted of his 1965 murder will be cleared the following Thursday. while insisting for years that they were not guilty.
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Two of the three men convicted of the murder of civil rights activist Malcolm X are expected to be exonerated as Manhattan’s top prosecutor moves to clear their names.
County Attorney Cy Vance and the attorneys representing the two men announced that it “will remove wrongful convictions” against Muhammad Aziz and Khalil Islam on Thursday – a move that debunks the official account of the assassination of the fiery orator, who was murdered on stage. in 1965 in a hail of bullets in front of hundreds of people, including his daughter and pregnant wife.
Muhammad Aziz, a suspect in the murder of Malcolm X, is escorted by detectives at police headquarters after his arrest in New York on February 26, 1965. Aziz, formerly known as Norman 3X Butler, will be wiped out after more than half a century, with prosecutors saying authorities have withheld evidence of the civil rights leader’s murder, according to a news release Wednesday.
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Aziz and Islam, members of the Nation of Islam, were sentenced to life in prison a year later along with Mujahid Abdul Halim, then known as Talmadge Hayer and Thomas Hagan.
While Halim confess to murder During the trial, he testified that neither Aziz nor Islam were involved. But he declined to name those who joined him in the attack.
Meanwhile, Islam, then known as Thomas 15X Johnson, and Aziz, then known as Norman 3X Butler, always maintained their chastity.
Khalil Islam (centre) is considered the third suspect in the murder of Malcolm X in New York on March 3, 1965. Islam, formerly known as Thomas 15X Johnson, was one of two men convicted in The assassination of Malcolm X, set to be unraveled after more than half a century.
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Halim eventually released the names of four men he said were his accomplices in 1978. But his testimony failed to convince officials to reopen an investigation into the murder and one The judge rejected the motion to dismiss the sentence.
Halim was released in 2010 after serving more than 40 years in prison. Islam was released in 1987 and died in 2009. Aziz, who was released on parole in 1985, is still fighting to clear his name with the help of the Innocence Project.
Suspicion and speculation that the FBI and NYPD mishandled the case, intentionally withholding or omitting information that could guarantee Islam and Aziz’s freedom, persisted for more than half a century. And in 2020, a documentary called Who killed Malcolm X? raised a series of new questions, eventually causing Vance to launch a new investigation.
“The day of the murder, it was a Sunday morning, I was lying on the couch with [injured] walked up and I heard it over the radio”, Aziz recalls in Who killed Malcolm X?
According to the Innocence Project, “In addition to numerous alibi witnesses, a doctor who treated Aziz at Jacobi Hospital in the Bronx just hours before Malcolm was murdered stepped forward to defend Aziz.”
Over the past 22 months, Vance’s team has unearthed FBI documents that could raise suspicions about Aziz and Islam’s involvement. That evidence was available at the time of trial but was withheld from the defense and the prosecution.
