Muhammad A. Aziz was exonerated in November of last year on charges of killing Malcolm X in 1966. On Sunday, the city agreed to pay him and Muhammad A. Aziz a combined $26 million for their wrongfully conviction for killing the late civil rights leader. Pool Photo by CurtisMeans/UPI |
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Oct. 31 (UPI) -- New York City has agreed to pay $26 million to settle lawsuits filed on behalf of two men who were wrongfully convicted of assassinating Malcolm X in 1965 and spent decades in jail for the crime.
The settlement comes a year after a New York State Supreme Court judge granted exonerations to Muhammad A. Aziz and Khalil Islam, who were convicted in 1966 of killing the civil rights leader a year earlier and served about 20 years in prison before being released in the mid-1980s.
Cy Vance Jr., who was the Manhattan district attorney last year, had asked the court to exonerate the two men following a review of their case, which uncovered police reports fingering other potential suspects and evidence that FBI agents ordered multiple informants to withhold their relationship to the agency from prosecutors and police.
Vance said the files made clear that "these men did not receive a fair trial, and their conviction must be vacated."
Nick Paolucci, a spokesman for the New York City Law Department, told The New York Times in a statement that the Sunday settlement will bring some measure of justice to the two men.
"This office stands by the opinion of former Manhattan district attorney Vance who stated, based on his investigation, that 'there is one ultimate conclusion: Mr. Aziz and Mr. Islam were wrongfully convicted of this crime.'"
The settlement money is to be split evenly between Aziz, 84, and the estate of Islam, who died in 2009 at the age of 74, Paolucci said.
David Shanies, an attorney who represents both men, said in a statement that what's most important here is that both Aziz and islam "have reclaimed their good names."
"They will go down in history as two brave, dignified, innocent men who never stopped fighting their tragic wrongful convictions," the statement said. "It was imperative that these civil lawsuits be resolved immediately and fairly, and I am gratified that New York City and its lawyers worked with us toward a just resolution."
Malcolm X was fatally shot Feb. 21, 1965, as he was about to give a speech at Manhattan's Audubon Ballroom. Aziz, Islam and a third Nation of Islam member, Mujahid Abdul Halim, were arrested and convicted of murder in 1966.
Halim confessed to shooting Malcolm X, and said members of a Newark, N.J., mosque aided him in the attack. He refused to identify Aziz and Islam as accomplices.
