Nov 20, 2023
Man Exonerated In Killing Of Malcolm X Sues FBI For $40 Million
- 9 minutes
The man who was exonerated
after being falsely accused,
convicted of killing Malcolm X,
sues for millions, all right?
Put up the picture full mass.
We have been covering this as
the story has developed over time.
[00:00:17]
So 85-year-old Muhammad Aziz,
who was exonerated for
the murder of the civil
rights activist Malcolm X,
is now suing the FBI on allegations
the agency hid evidence
of the actual killers and
proof of his actual innocence.
[00:00:35]
Now he's suing, but
this stuff is already basically on
record as Atlanta Blackstar reports.
He claims the agency engineered
this cover-up to protect and
preserve, court,the scope, nature, and
[00:00:51]
activities of its
Counterintelligence Operations
while weakening the civil
rights movement COINTELPRO.
The $40 million lawsuit filed by Mr.
Mohammed Aziz alleges the FBI,
[00:01:08]
including then-Director J.Edgar Hoover.
Intentionally caused the presentation
of false evidence against,
concealed, a trove of evidence,
and orchestrated fundamentally
[00:01:24]
unfair legal proceedings against Mr.
Muhammad Aziz.
At Hoover's behest,
the FBI's Counterintelligence Program,
also known as COINTELPRO,
enabled agents to infiltrate U.S.
[00:01:40]
political and social movements.
Completely unconstitutional, by the way.
Hoover's aim was to court,
expose, disrupt, misdirect,
discredit, and otherwise
neutralize Black activist groups,
[00:01:57]
according to one decades-old FBI report.
The suit also claims the FBI carried
out concerted efforts alongside
the New York Police Department to suppress
the integrity of the investigation
into Malcolm X's murder and exchanged
a network of information and evidence.
[00:02:17]
Mohammed Aziz, a US Navy veteran and
a 26-year-old father of two at the time,
was arrested for
Malcolm X's death alongside another
accused killer, Khalil Islam.
[00:02:32]
The civil rights leader was
murdered on the first, on the 21st,
excuse me, of February 1965.
He was preparing to give
a speech at the Audubon Ballroom.
This was in Upper Manhattan
when it happened, so Mr.
[00:02:48]
Aziz spent 20 years in prison for
this false conviction.
Ms. Islam served 22 years but
died in prison in 2009.
Islam's estate filed what's called
a companion suit, $40 million lawsuit.
Their lawsuits claim both men
were attractive targets to pin
[00:03:06]
the crime on because of their
affiliation with the Nation of Islam and
also because they did not
have many alibi witnesses.
They had some, but it wasn't as if a whole
crowd could vouch for their whereabouts,
all right?
Put them up in a hearing, okay?
[00:03:25]
To vacate their convictions,
then, DA Cyrus R Vance Jr.
claimed FBI employees and the NYPD court.
This is coming from the then
chief prosecutor court,
[00:03:43]
intentionally concealed but damn,
that sounds like a crime, doesn't it?
Intentionally concealed
records of witnesses,
some of whom were FBI informants.
Those things would have had
to come to the forefront as
[00:04:00]
evidence during a trial
who failed to identify Mr.
Islam implicated other subjects and
suspects in court all right?
Mujahid Abdul Halim, aka Thomas Hagan,
[00:04:16]
one of the men who shot Malcolm X,
testified in 1966 that Aziz and
Islam had nothing to do with the murder.
Malcolm X was killed in 1965.
This man said, these individuals
your government has arrested had
[00:04:35]
nothing to do with Halim confessed he and
four other men were involved
in the fatal shooting but
never identified his co-conspirators.
However, in the lawsuit it alleges
that the FBI decided to conceal
[00:04:51]
the evidence pointing to another
suspect named William Bradley,
who fired a shotgun blast at Malcolm X,
because the agency
had a court significant,
ongoing relationship with Bradley.
Aziz and Islam both told police they were
at home at the time with their families.
[00:05:12]
Aziz was home recovering from
a leg injury that he sustained
after being beaten by police a month
before the murder of Malcolm X.
The complaint also alleges that the FBI
coerced witnesses into giving false and
[00:05:31]
materially misleading statements to
prosecutors in their sworn testimony.
And claims that the weapon Halim
used to shoot Malcolm X was
recovered by an FBI informant
named Ronald Timberlake.
[00:05:46]
Timberlake reportedly delivered
the gun to the FBI, and
agents, then handed it off to the NYPD.
New York City and the State of New York
did award $26 million to Aziz and
Islam's estate to settle lawsuits
over misconduct from police and
[00:06:05]
Manhattan district attorneys
in their convictions, okay?
Payment not nearly enough,
obviously, okay?
You took so much away.
I'm talking about
the governments involved,
not just one, multiple agencies involved,
[00:06:23]
in order to pin the murder
of Malcolm X to two
individuals who had nothing to do with it,
all right?
Now you got some money allocated.
[00:06:38]
There's a suit now for
40 million with a more robust and
complete narrative of
what actually happened.
Names are highlighted here.
When will the people who were involved,
some of them are, still alive?
[00:06:56]
When are they going to be indicted?
Everything cited is illegal, all of it,
even when the DA stood up and
publicly proclaimed that the FBI did this,
which, by the way,
[00:07:11]
was a bold move, that DA did not
engage the FBI and arrest them.
It takes more than one or two people
to pull off something this massive and
this corrupt.
It takes an entire culture of
individuals working in coordination with
[00:07:27]
the other multiple agencies,
multiple governmental operations,
multiple governmental leaders who
were involved in this massive and
high-ranking cover-up and crime.
All right, Wosny, thoughts here.
[00:07:43]
>> Speaker 2: Man, I just hope
this brother and his family and
their estates are able to get
some level of restitution.
I think it's important for
folks to understand that Elijah Muhammad,
the Nation of Islam, despite what their
reputation is in mainstream media,
[00:08:01]
this is a conservative Black Organization.
And never be surprised when
Black Conservatives, black as they may be,
are in collaboration with
the authorities to stamp out and
put down black dissidents and
Black Radicals.
[00:08:19]
It's no different from what
happened to Malcolm X.
This was a collaboration
between the state and
the very top of the organization
of the Nation of Islam.
There's been incredible
reporting around this.
This isn't rumor or conjecture.
[00:08:35]
This was collaboration between the FBI and
what I would tell people now
is that the state has realized
that freaking violently
murdering dissidents is bad for
business and a terrible look.
[00:08:52]
>> Speaker 1: Man, the purchase power of
the American government is quite massive,
and if you're willing to sell out,
that means you have a price.
And now they just have to
figure out what it is.
Very unfortunate Man,
the purchase power of the American
government is quite massive, and
[00:09:07]
if you're willing to sell out,
that means you have a price.
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