An 85-year-old man who was exonerated for the murder of civil rights activist Malcolm X is suing the FBI on allegations that the agency hid evidence of the onetime Nation of Islam leader’s actual killers and proof of his innocence.
The $40 million lawsuit filed by Muhammad Aziz alleges that the Federal Bureau of Investigation, including then-Director J. Edgar Hoover, “intentionally caused the presentation of false evidence against…concealed a trove of evidence…and orchestrated fundamentally unfair legal proceedings against Mr. Aziz.”
He claims the agency engineered this cover-up to protect and preserve “the scope, nature, and activities” of its counterintelligence operations while simultaneously weakening the civil rights movement.
At Hoover’s behest, the FBI’s Counterintelligence Program, also known as COINTELPRO, enabled agents to infiltrate U.S. political and social movements. Hoover’s aim was to “expose, disrupt, misdirect, discredit, and otherwise neutralize” Black activist groups, according to one decades-old FBI report.
The suit also claims the FBI carried out concerted efforts alongside the New York Police Department to suppress the integrity of the investigation into Malcolm X’s murder and exchanged a network of information and evidence.
Aziz, a U.S. Navy veteran, was a 26-year-old father of two at the time he was arrested for Malcolm X’s death alongside another accused killer, Khalil Islam. The civil rights leader was murdered on Feb. 21, 1965, as he was preparing to give a speech at the Audubon Ballroom in Upper Manhattan.
Aziz spent 20 years in prison after his conviction. Islam served 22 years but died in prison in 2009. Islam’s estate filed a companion $40 million lawsuit. Their lawsuits claim that both men were “attractive targets” to pin the crime on because of their affiliation with the Nation of Islam and also because they didn’t have many alibi witnesses.
Both weren’t declared…
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