An 85-year-old man who was exonerated for the homicide of civil rights activist Malcolm X is suing the FBI on allegations that the company hid proof of the onetime Nation of Islam chief’s precise killers and proof of his innocence.
The $40 million lawsuit filed by Muhammad Aziz alleges that the Federal Bureau of Investigation, together with then-Director J. Edgar Hoover, “deliberately precipitated the presentation of false proof towards…hid a trove of proof…and orchestrated essentially unfair authorized proceedings towards Mr. Aziz.”
He claims the company engineered this cover-up to guard and protect “the scope, nature, and actions” of its counterintelligence operations whereas concurrently weakening the civil rights motion.
At Hoover’s behest, the FBI’s Counterintelligence Program, often known as COINTELPRO, enabled brokers to infiltrate U.S. political and social actions. Hoover’s purpose was to “expose, disrupt, misdirect, discredit, and in any other case neutralize” Black activist teams, in keeping with one decades-old FBI report.
The swimsuit additionally claims the FBI carried out concerted efforts alongside the New York Police Division to suppress the integrity of the investigation into Malcolm X’s homicide and exchanged a community of data and proof.
Aziz, a U.S. Navy veteran, was a 26-year-old father of two on the time he was arrested for Malcolm X’s loss of life alongside one other accused killer, Khalil Islam. The civil rights chief was murdered on Feb. 21, 1965, as he was making ready to provide a speech on the Audubon Ballroom in Higher Manhattan.
Aziz spent 20 years in jail after his conviction. Islam served 22 years however died in jail in 2009. Islam’s property filed a companion $40 million lawsuit. Their lawsuits declare that each males have been “engaging targets” to pin the crime on due to their affiliation with the Nation of Islam and likewise as a result of they didn’t have many alibi witnesses.
Each weren’t declared harmless till November 2021 after their attorneys labored hand in hand with New York County district attorneys and the Innocence Undertaking to show that Aziz and Islam have been wrongfully convicted.
In a listening to to vacate their convictions, then-District Lawyer Cyrus R. Vance Jr. claimed that FBI workers and the New York Police Division “deliberately hid” data of witnesses — a few of whom have been FBI informants — “who did not determine Mr. Islam and implicated different topics and suspects.”
Mujahid Abdul Halim, one of many males who shot Malcolm X, testified in 1966 that Aziz and Islam had nothing to do with the homicide. Halim confessed that he and 4 different males have been concerned within the deadly capturing however by no means recognized his co-conspirators.
Nonetheless, Aziz’s swimsuit alleges that the FBI hid proof pointing to a different suspect named William Bradley, who fired a shotgun blast at Malcolm X as a result of the company had a “important ongoing relationship” with Bradley.
Aziz and Islam each instructed police they have been at house on the time with their households. Aziz was house recovering from a leg damage that he sustained after being overwhelmed by cops a month earlier than Malcolm X’s homicide, the swimsuit said.
The grievance additionally alleges that the FBI coerced witnesses into “giving false and materially deceptive statements to prosecutors and of their sworn testimony” and claims that the weapon Halim used to shoot Malcolm X was recovered by an FBI informant named Ronald Timberlake. Timberlake reportedly delivered the gun to the FBI, and brokers then handed it off to the NYPD.
New York Metropolis and the state of New York did award $26 million to Aziz and Islam’s property to settle lawsuits over misconduct from police and Manhattan district attorneys of their convictions.
