Three daughters of Malcolm X have accused the CIA, FBI, the New York Police Department (NYPD) and others in a US$100 million lawsuit filed on Friday of playing roles in the 1965 assassination of the civil rights leader.
In the lawsuit filed in the US the Southern District of New York, the daughters — along with the Malcolm X estate — claimed that the agencies were aware of and were involved in the assassination plot and failed to stop the killing.
At a news conference on Friday, attorney Ben Crump stood with family members as he described the lawsuit, saying he hoped federal and city officials would read it “and learn all the dastardly deeds that were done by their predecessors and try to right these historic wrongs.”
Photo: Reuters
The NYPD and CIA did not immediately respond to requests for comment, while the FBI and a spokesman for the US Department of State, which was also sued, declined to comment.
For decades, more questions than answers have arisen over who was to blame for the death of Malcolm X, who was 39 years old when he was slain on Feb. 21, 1965, at the Audubon Ballroom on West 165th St in Manhattan as he spoke to several hundred people. Born Malcolm Little in Omaha, Nebraska, Malcolm X later changed his name to El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz.
Three men were convicted of crimes in the death, but two of them were exonerated in 2021 after investigators concluded that some evidence was shaky and authorities had held back some information.
In the lawsuit, the family said the prosecution suppressed the government’s role in the assassination.
The lawsuit alleged that there was a “corrupt, unlawful and unconstitutional” relationship between law enforcement and “ruthless killers that went unchecked for many years and was actively concealed, condoned, protected and facilitated by government agents,” leading up to the murder of Malcolm X.
The NYPD, coordinating with federal law enforcement agencies, arrested the activist’s security detail days before the assassination and intentionally removed their officers from inside the ballroom where Malcolm X was killed, the lawsuit said.
Meanwhile, federal agencies had personnel, including undercover agents, in the ballroom, but failed to protect him, it added.
The lawsuit was not brought sooner because the defendants withheld information from the family, including the identities of undercover “informants, agents and provocateurs” and what they knew about the planning that preceded the attack.
The family “did not know who murdered Malcolm X, why he was murdered, the level of NYPD, FBI and CIA orchestration, the identity of the governmental agents who conspired to ensure his demise, or who fraudulently covered-up their role,” it states.
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