The convictions of two men found guilty of the murder of Malcolm X are expected to be overturned Thursday, according to the Manhattan District Attorney and lawyers for the two men, rewriting the official history of one of the most famous murders of the US civil rights era.
The two men's 1966 convictions are expected to be overturned after a lengthy investigation, reflecting long-standing doubts about who killed the civil rights leader.
The acquittal of the two men, Muhammad Aziz and Khalil Islam, comes "a remarkable acknowledgment of the grave mistakes made in a case of great importance," according to the New York Times, related to the killing of one of America's most influential black leaders in 1965, in the era of anti-racism.
An investigation by the Manhattan Attorney General's office and the two men's attorneys, over a 22-month period, concluded that prosecutors and two of the country's major law enforcement agencies — the FBI and the New York Police Department — withheld key evidence that, if turned over, likely would have led to The two men were acquitted.
Aziz and Islam spent decades in prison for murder, after three men opened fire inside a crowded auditorium in Manhattan's Audubon Hall while Malcolm X was beginning a lecture.
But the case against them was dubious from the start, and over the following decades historians and pundits cast doubt on the official story.
Nor did it reveal a police or government plot to kill him, leaving unanswered questions about how and why the police and federal government failed to prevent the assassination.
He reconfessed Cyrus R. Vance Jr., the current attorney general in Manhattan, who is among the most prominent local attorneys general in the country, crafted one of the most painful moments in modern American history.
In an interview, Mr. Vance apologized on behalf of law enforcement, who he said had let the two men's families down, and said these failures could not be remedied, "but what we can do is admit the error and the severity of the error".
A re-investigation by Mr. Vance and the office of David Shanz, a civil rights attorney, dealt with significant hurdles, including the deaths of many associated with the murder case, including witnesses, investigators, lawyers, as well as other potential suspects, long beforehand.
Key documents have been lost to time, and physical evidence, such as murder weapons, is no longer available for testing.
"This points to the fact that, historically, law enforcement agencies have often failed to live up to their responsibilities. These men have not been given the justice they deserve," Vance said.
Police files revealed that a New York Daily News reporter received a call the morning of the shooting indicating that Malcolm X would be killed.
Altogether, the reinvestigation found that had the new evidence been presented to a jury, it would have acquitted the defendants, and neither Aziz, 83, who was released in 1985, and Islam, who was released in 1987 and died in 2009, would not have had to Spend decades in the struggle to clear their name.
Deborah Francois, the lawyer for the two men, said that "this was not an oversight", but "it was the result of very serious official misconduct".
Malcolm X was killed at a point in which he was expected to become one of the most famous civil rights leaders, six years after his transformation from street life in Nebraska to Islamic advocate and advocate for black rights, known for his strong criticism of the way the authorities abused their power and brutalized blacks.
Some of his ideas, which he embraced during his tenure in the "Nation of Islam" organization, are striking and unusual, even by today's standards, as he called for "black separation", which caused an attack on him by many media outlets.
In 1965, a year after leaving the Nation of Islam, he began to adopt a new mission, the Organization of African-American Unity, which was the subject of his planned speech at the Audubon Hall where he was assassinated.
One of the suspects, Mujahid Abdel Halim, was arrested in the hall after being shot in the thigh. Aziz was arrested five days later, and Ali Islam, another five days later, and within a week, were charged to the three men, all members In the Nation of Islam, the charge of murder.
Witnesses' statements were contradictory, and no physical evidence linked them to the murder or the crime scene. When Abdel Halim, also known as Talmadge Heyer, stood on the bench to confess for the second time his role in the murder, he insisted that the other defendants were innocent.
On March 11, 1966, all three defendants were convicted and, a month later, sentenced to life imprisonment.
The two men spent decades in prison, with years in solitary confinement, and were held in some of New York's worst high-security prisons in the 1970s.
Even after their release, they were treated as the murderers of Malcolm X, affecting their ability to live in the community.
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