The New York State Supreme Court called his conviction a “failure of justice.” (file)
New York:
The two men whose convictions for the 1965 murder of Malcolm X were overturned last year will receive $36 million from New York City and the state, their attorney confirmed Sunday night.
“The tragedy of the murder of Malcolm X was felt all over the world, and was compounded by the fact that it led to the conviction and imprisonment of two innocent, young, black men in America,” his lawyer, David Shaney, told AFP. said in an emailed statement. ,
The two men, Muhammad Aziz and Khalil Islam, both spent more than 20 years in prison for the murder of Malcolm X, which they always maintained had they not done so.
He was released in the mid-1980s, but his names were not fully approved until November 2021 by the New York State Supreme Court, which nearly half a century earlier called his sentence a “failure of justice.”
“Today we acknowledge that injustice and take a modest step toward rectifying it,” said Mr Shenise.
He confirmed a New York Times report that New York City would pay $26 million to be split between the family of 84-year-old Muhammad Aziz and Islam, who died in 2009.
The state government of New York will also pay five million dollars each, for a total of $36 million in compensation.
It has been on official record for more than half a century that three members of the Black nationalist group Nation of Islam – which Malcolm X had recently sacked – shot the iconic leader when he was trying to speak on the Harlem Ballroom stage. Arrived for
Aziz, Islam, and a third person, Mujahid Abdul Halim, were convicted in 1966 – but historians have long cast doubt on that thesis.
Mr Halim – now 81 and released from prison in 2010 – confessed to the murder but maintained the innocence of the other two.
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