Thirty-six million dollars: this is the sum, evenly divided, that the city and the State of New York will pay for the two African Americans exonerated in 2021 after more than twenty years in prison each, for the murder in 1965 of Malcolm X, the their lawyer revealed on Sunday 30 October, confirmation of information from New York Times.
“The tragedy of Malcolm X’s murder has been felt around the world and exacerbated by the fact that it led to the conviction and incarceration of two innocent black young men in America”their lawyer David Shanies replied in an email to Agence France-Presse (AFP). “This injustice is now recognized and a modest step has been taken to correct it”added the representative of Muhammad Aziz, 84, and the family of Khalil Islam, who died in 2009.
The lawyer confirmed that New York City would pay a total of $ 26 million, in addition to the $ 5 million granted to each party by New York State. In the New York Times, David Shanies specifies that the 36 million will be divided equally between Muhammad Aziz and the heirs of Khalil Islam.
42 years in prison for two
In November 2021, the New York State Supreme Court had legally authorized MM. Aziz and Islam, calling him“lack of justice” their conviction more than half a century ago for the February 21, 1965 Harlem assassination of civil rights icon Malcolm X.
Muhammad Aziz and Khalil Islam, who served 42 years in prison among them, have always maintained their innocence. The third convict Mujahid Abdul Halim – released in 2010 – admitted at the time that he shot Malcolm X and exonerated his two co-defendants, but in vain until 2020 and the reopening of the case by the New York justice.
A twist made possible by the airing in February 2020 of a documentary on Netflix (“Who killed Malcolm X? “), renewing the doubts about the presence of MM. Aziz and Islam at the scene of the murder. After months of a retrial, then Manhattan attorney Cyrus Vance teamed up with the two men’s attorneys and an organization, “The project of innocence”who fights against judicial errors, to file a motion for annulment in the New York Supreme Court.
In November 2021, on live television and to applause, prosecutor Vance presented the “apologies” US judicial authorities for “decades of injustice” And “Unacceptable violations of the law and public trust”. In court, he did it “recognized the seriousness of this error” judiciary, without dwelling on the rumors concerning the troubled role played at the time by the federal police (FBI) and that of New York.
