State, city of New York to pay $36 million to men exonerated in Malcolm X’s murder

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October 30, 2022

By Dennis Romero, NBC News

Muhammad Aziz and Khalil Islam after their arrests in 1965. (AP)

The state and city of New York have agreed to pay a man and the family of his late co-defendant $36 million for their wrongful convictions in the 1965 assassination of civil rights leader Malcolm X.

Muhammad Aziz, 84, and Khalil Islam, who died in 2009 at age 74, were convicted alongside Mujahid Abdul Halim in the fatal shooting of Black Muslims’ most high-profile spokesman, Malcolm X, during the start of a speech at the Audubon Ballroom in New York City on Feb. 21, 1965.

The attorney for Aziz and Islam said Sunday that the city agreed to settle for a total of $26 million to cover the claims of both plaintiffs and that the state agreed to $10 million.

The City of New York Law Department said through a spokesperson Sunday, “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.”

The Law Department said it stands by its 2021 conclusion, when then-Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance Jr. said, “There is one ultimate conclusion: Mr. Aziz and Mr. Islam were wrongfully convicted of this crime.”

Learn more in the full article.

Unfortunately, exoneration is still traumatizing for Black men who have been wrongfully convicted.

More news stories like this.

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