Two men, victims of one of the biggest judicial errors in African American history, will receive $ 36 million in compensation from the city and state of New York. Released in 2021, both spent nearly 20 years in prison each for the assassination of Malcolm X in 1965.
Attorney David Shanies, defender of Muhammad Aziz, 84, and the family of Khalil Islam, who died in 2009, confirmed Sunday evening in an email to AFP that “an injustice (had been) recognized today and a modest step taken to correct it “.
Questioned by the New York Times, the New York City Hall Law Department had previously disclosed a financial compensation agreement with “Ms. Aziz and Islam unfairly convicted of this crime”: the murder of Malcolm X on February 21, 1965 at gallery of the Audubon Ballroom, a performance hall in Harlem, a neighborhood north of Manhattan.
The two men, members of Malcolm X’s “Nation of Islam” movement, were sentenced to long prison terms in 1966 and spent 42 years behind bars – about 20 each – for a murder they had never committed.
Spectacular turn of events
On November 19, the New York State Supreme Court cleared them. Justice had even acknowledged his “failure” by jailing two innocent people for the assassination of the icon of the black cause in the 1960s in the United States.
Attorney David Shanies confirmed the New York Times figures: $ 26 million from New York City and $ 10 million from New York State. Muhammad Aziz, released in 1985, and Khalil Islam, released in 1987 and died in 2009 at the age of 74, have always maintained their innocence.
The third convict, Mujahid Abdul Halim, admitted at the time that he shot Malcolm X and exonerated his two co-defendants, but in vain. Until New York justice reopens the case in 2020.
>> Read also Two men convicted of the murder of Malcolm X have been exonerated
Netflix Documentary
In fact, it was necessary to wait for the broadcast in February 2020 of a documentary on Netflix (“Who Killed Malcolm X?”), Renewing the doubts about the presence of MM. Aziz and Islam at the scene of the murder.
After months of a retrial, then Manhattan attorney Cyrus Vance teamed up with the two men’s attorneys and an organization, The Innocence Project, which fights judicial errors, to file a motion to leave the New York Supreme Court. .
>> To see, the trailer of the series:
Last November, on live television and amid applause, prosecutor Vance presented the “apology” of the American judicial authorities for “decades of injustice” and “unacceptable violations of the law and of the public trust. Public opinion”.
>> Read also A series of documentaries dedicated to the death of Malcolm X on Netflix
ats / mirò
