Malcolm X’s Daughters Sue F.B.I., C.I.A. and Police
The New York Times
A suit filed in Manhattan federal court Friday accuses law enforcement of intentionally failing to protect him and stymying efforts to identify his killers.
Nearly 60 years after Malcolm X’s assassination at the Audubon Ballroom in Manhattan, his family filed a federal lawsuit on Friday claiming that the New York Police Department, C.I.A. and F.B.I. played a role in his killing.
The suit, filed in Manhattan, claims that the agencies knew about threats against the civil rights leader, but “failed to intervene on his behalf.” It says that they had “intentionally removed their officers from inside the ballroom” before he was shot and left him even more exposed by arresting his security detail in the days before the event.
The family also claims that the agencies engaged in “fraudulent concealment and cover-up” after Malcolm X’s death by keeping information from his family and hamstringing efforts to identify his killers.
Three men were arrested and convicted in the killing. But after spending more than 20 years in prison, two of them — Muhammad A. Aziz and Khalil Islam — were exonerated. (The third, Thomas Hagan, was paroled in 2010.)
“It has taken us a long time to get to this point,” Ilyasah Shabazz, Malcolm X’s third-eldest daughter, said on Friday at a news conference announcing the suit.
