Legal professionals for the household of Malcolm X have filed a $100 million lawsuit towards the U.S. authorities, Division of Justice, FBI, CIA and the NYPD for conspiring to permit the assassination of the civil rights chief in 1965.
“The government’s fingerprints are all over the assassination of Malcolm X,” civil rights lawyer Benjamin Crump mentioned Friday at a press convention within the former Audubon Ballroom, the Washington Heights constructing the place Malcolm X was gunned down earlier than giving a speech. “We believe we have the evidence to prove it.”
Crump stood in entrance of a mural that includes Malcolm X with the group of attorneys who’ve labored to organize the case and one among Malcolm X’s daughters, Dr. Ilyasah Shabazz.
“It has taken us a long time to get to this point, and we fought primarily for our mother, who was here on Feb. 21, 1965,” mentioned Shabazz. “My mother was pregnant but she came here to see her husband speak, someone who she just admired totally, and to witness this horrific assassination of her husband.”
Malcolm X was shot by three gunmen on Feb. 21, 1965, whereas standing onstage of the Audubon Ballroom, now referred to as the Malcolm X & Dr. Betty Shabazz Memorial and Academic Middle. The suspects, together with Nation of Islam members Muhammad Aziz and Khalil Islam, had been convicted of first-degree homicide.
However the taking pictures has all the time been shrouded in thriller amid conspiracy theories that the true killers bought away — and that authorities businesses coated up the reality and withheld proof that might have cleared Aziz and Islam.
Mujahid Abdul Halim, a 3rd gunman who was caught on the scene, later confessed and declared Aziz and Islam had been harmless, however the two males spent greater than 20 years in jail for the crime.
In 2021, kin of a deceased former NYPD officer, Raymond Wooden, shared what attorneys referred to as a decade-old deathbed confession detailing a plot to falsely arrest the civil rights chief’s safety guards Khaleel Sayyed and Walter Bowe to verify Malcolm X wasn’t adequately protected throughout his last speech.
Sayyed and Bowe gave sworn affidavits in February, and mentioned they had been busted on trumped-up prices and saved out of the image simply days earlier than Malcolm X was killed.
In 2021, a state choose exonerated Aziz and Islam. The town paid $26 million and the state paid $10 million to Aziz and the household of Islam to settle lawsuits associated to their wrongful convictions in 2022.
Crump mentioned that was the case’s turning level.
“Over the last three years every day, every week, every month, we have been unearthing new evidence — evidence of people never having spoken before about what they witnessed during those turbulent times in the 1960s.”
Crump cited an affidavit given by Mustafa Hassan, who was working safety that night time on the Audubon Ballroom, and had by no means earlier than spoken out about witnessing the homicide.
Hassan, who was subsequent to Malcolm X as he died, in 2023 described his try to cease one of many gunmen as he fled, however being stymied by police.
“Why would it be that no one, for almost 57 years, never heard from [Hassan], never spoke to him, never took a statement from him?” requested lawyer Ray Hamlin at Friday’s press convention. “Why wouldn’t they speak to someone whose presence is so prominent?
“Why would the government prosecute two individuals knowing those individuals had no involvement in the assassination? What was it that our government, what was it that the city was trying to protect?”
Legal professional Flint Taylor mentioned after Aziz and Islam had been exonerated, proof started to floor linking the FBI’s position within the assassination to the NYPD, citing 9 FBI stories that confessed killer Halim “had heavy connections to the FBI.”
“We’re looking for his file, they’re trying to say it may have been destroyed,” mentioned Taylor.
In 2023, on the 58th anniversary of Malcolm X’s killing, Crump introduced plans to file a wrongful demise lawsuit towards the businesses.
“We believe we are on solid ground to go forward with this lawsuit at his time. We’re not just making history, but we’re making a path to justice,” mentioned Crump.
