Men convicted of killing Malcolm X officially exonerated

(Updated)    After a 22-month investigation, two of the three men convicted for the assassination of Malcom X were exonerated on Thursday. The two men had always maintained their innocence.

Muhammad A. Aziz and Khalil Islam were convicted and sentenced to life prison for the 1965 assassination of Malcolm X, one of the most prominent leaders of the civil rights movement.

Both men have maintained their innocence since their arrest in 1966. Aziz, now in his 80s, was released in 1985 but continues to fight to clear his record. Islam died in 2009.

“The events that brought us here should never have occurred; those events were and are the result of a process that was corrupt to its core — one that is all too familiar — even in 2021," Aziz said in a statement.

Aziz and Islam are being represented by the Innocence Project and Shanies Law Office, a New York civil rights law firm. Manhattan District Attorney Cy Vance and the lawyers of the two men are expecting to clear the men’s name on Thursday.

“[We will]move to vacate the wrongful convictions of two individuals for the murder of Malcolm X," said Vance.

Innocence Project co-founder Barry Scheck called the case “one of the most blatant miscarriages of justice that I have ever seen.”

Malcolm X was assassinated on February 21, 1965 at the Audubon Ballroom in New York City, where several men opened fire as he was giving a speech.

After the incident, three members of the political and religious group, the Nation of Islam, were arrested for his murder, Mujahid Abdul Halim, Aziz, and Islam. Halim admitted to taking part in the assassination, but testified that Aziz and Islam were innocent. Aziz had an alibi, that he was at the hospital at the time of the assassination.

“The day of the murder, which was a Sunday morning, I was laying over the couch with my foot up and I heard it over the radio,” Aziz recalled in the Netflix documentary, “Who Killed Malcolm X?"

In 1978, Halim identified four other men who were involved but no one was ever arrested.

Aziz urged the criminal system to “take responsibility for the immeasurable harm it caused me.”