Two men who were wrongly convicted of the assassination of civil rights icon Malcolm X in 1965 and who were cleared of those charges last year will be compensated with $36 million.
New York City will pay the men $26 million, while New York state will pay $10 million, according to David Shanies, the men’s attorney.
Both men, Muhammad Aziz and Khalil Islam always maintained they were innocent.
Aziz is 84. Islam died in 2009.
A judge dismissed the men’s convictions last year in the face of new evidence that there was witness intimidation and the suppression of evidence related to their trial.
The men spent decades in prison and were paroled in the 1980s.
The money will be equally divided between Aziz and Islam’s estate.
Cyrus Vance, Jr who was District Attorney at the time of Malcolm’s assassination has apologized for law enforcement’s “serious, unacceptable violations of law and the public trust.
The New York City Law Department said Sunday that the financial agreement “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.”
Malcolm was shot in Upper Manhattan’s Audubon Ballroom.
Some information in this report came from The Associated Press.
New York Compensates Men Wrongly Convicted for Malcom X Killing
- By VOA News
