Men wrongly convicted in Malcolm X killing to receive R36m

A man exonerated last year in the 1965 slaying of black activist Malcolm X and the estate of a second man cleared posthumously reached a settlement totalling $36m with New York, their attorney says.  

Muhammad Aziz, 84, had sought $40m after serving about two decades in prison and more than 55 years after being wrongly blamed in the case that raised questions about racism in the criminal justice system. Aziz is married and has six children.

Khalil Islam, who died in 2009 at age 74, also spent more than 20 years in prison and was exonerated in November 2021. His estate had also filed a $40m suit.

The city has agreed to pay $26m and the state will pay $10m, attorney David Shanies said on Sunday. The survivor and the man's estate will split the settlement.

“Muhammad Aziz, Khalil Islam, and their families deserve this for their suffering,” Shanies said. “They suffered a lifetime under the cloud of wrongly being accused of killing a civil-rights leader.”

Nick Paolucci, a spokesperson for the city’s law department, told the New York Times “this settlement brings some measure of justice to individuals who spent decades in prison and bore the stigma of being falsely accused of murdering an iconic figure”.

A representative for the state attorney-general’s office was not immediately available for comment.

Malcolm X became prominent as the voice of the Nation of Islam, which espoused black separatism, before leaving the organisation in 1964 and angering some of its followers. He was shot dead at age 39 in February 1965 while preparing to speak at New York’s Audubon Ballroom.

A third man, Mujahid Halim, was also convicted for the shooting. He testified that Aziz and Islam were innocent. Halim was paroled in 2010.

Reuters