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History > USA > Civil rights > Malcolm X 1925-1965
killing of Malcolm X
Muhammad Abdul Aziz then known as Norman 3X Butler - released in 2010, exonerated in 2021
Khalil Islam (? - 2009) also known as Thomas 15X Johnson exonerated in 2021
Khalil Islam, left, and Muhammad A. Aziz, right, were escorted by the police after their arrests.
Photograph: Harvey Lippman Associated Press, Bettmann Archive, via Getty Images
Who are Muhammad Aziz and Khalil Islam, the exonerated men? NYT November 17, 2021
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/11/17/
(Muhammad Aziz,) exonerated in the killing of Malcolm X is suing New York City for $40 million
https://www.npr.org/2022/07/16/
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/10/30/
https://www.npr.org/2022/07/16/
For decades, the killing of Malcolm X has captivated the attention of scholars with a critical question: Were the wrong men convicted of the crime?
One of three men, Mujahid Abdul Halim, confessed at the 1966 murder trial.
But he also testified that his co-defendants — Muhammad A. Aziz and Khalil Islam — were innocent and that he knew, but would not name, the actual assassins.
A decade later, Mr. Halim gave two sworn affidavits as part of an unsuccessful appeal by Mr. Aziz and Mr. Islam.
In the documents, he named four other men who he said took part in the assassination, all members of a Nation of Islam mosque in Newark.
He gave only partial names.
The review by the Manhattan district attorney’s office did not pin the crime on any other suspects.
But scholars have formed their own conclusions about the identities and roles of the four men identified by Mr. Halim, who previously went by the name Talmadge Hayer.
It is widely believed among experts on the assassination that William Bradley, a member of the Newark mosque who once served time in prison on charges that included threatening to kill three people, fired the first shotgun blast.
Mr. Halim identified the man with the shotgun as William X.
Mr. Bradley denied any involvement and died in 2018.
The historian Manning Marable, who wrote a Pulitzer Prize-winning biography of Malcolm X in 2011, suspected that Mr. Bradley was probably pulled into the assassination plot by two other members of the Newark mosque whom Mr. Halim identified: Leon Davis and Benjamin Thomas.
https://www.nytimes.com/live/2021/11/18/
https://www.nytimes.com/live/2021/11/18/
November 18, 2021
Muhammad Aziz and Khalil Islam, convicted of killing Malcolm X, are exonerated.
In 1966, three men were convicted of the murder of civil rights leader Malcolm X.
Two of them, Muhammad Aziz and Khalil Islam, insisted throughout the years that they were innocent.
(...)
more than a half-century later, these two men have been exonerated.
Their lawyers called their convictions, quote, "a serious and unacceptable violation of the law."
https://www.npr.org/2021/11/18/
https://www.law.umich.edu/special/exoneration/Pages/
https://www.npr.org/2022/10/31/
https://www.npr.org/2021/11/20/
https://www.npr.org/2021/11/18/
https://www.npr.org/2020/02/11/
1985 and 1987
Muhammad Abdul Aziz and Khalil Islam are granted parole two years apart.
After Mr. Aziz’s attempts to be released on parole had been twice denied, his application was approved in 1985, and he was released after 20 years in prison, when he was 46 years old.
Two years later, Mr. Islam was also granted parole.
He died in 2009.
was released in 2010.
https://www.nytimes.com/live/2021/11/18/
https://www.nytimes.com/live/2021/11/18/
1977 to 1978
Mujahid Abdul Halim files two affidavits implicating four other people in the murder.
Mr. Halim filed two affidavits between 1977 and 1978 that detailed the logistics of the killing and reasserted his claim that his two co-defendants were innocent.
He gave partial names of four members of a Nation of Islam mosque in Newark, N.J., saying they had been his partners in the assassination.
A defense lawyer moved for the case to be reopened in light of new evidence, but a judge denied the motion.
https://www.nytimes.com/live/2021/11/18/
https://www.nytimes.com/live/2021/11/18/
February 28, 1966
Mujahid Abdul Halim confesses and says the other two men are innocent.
The trial over Malcolm X’s killing began on Jan. 22, and all three men took the witness stand to deny the accusations.
But several weeks later, Mr. Halim testified a second time, telling jurors that he had been involved in the murder and that his two co-defendants were innocent.
He declined to name the real killers.
Still, the jury convicted all three men, and they were later sentenced to 20 years to life in prison.
https://www.nytimes.com/live/2021/11/18/
https://www.nytimes.com/live/2021/11/18/
Muhammad A. Aziz, then known as Norman 3X Butler
Muhammad Aziz NYT November 2021 caption and full source in next edition.
Muhammad Aziz, second from left, shook hands with the civil rights lawyer Barry Scheck after the court hearing on Thursday.
Photograph: Pool photo by Curtis Means
Exoneration Is ‘Bittersweet’ for Men Cleared in Malcolm X’s Murder An emotional crowd burst into applause in a packed Manhattan courtroom Thursday after the judge threw out the convictions of Muhammad Aziz and Khalil Islam. NYT Nov. 18, 2021
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/11/18/
Muhammad A. Aziz stood up in a New York City courtroom on Thursday, 55 years after he and two other men were found guilty of murdering Malcolm X, and began to speak.
Minutes later, he would walk out of the courtroom an innocent man in the eyes of the law, his conviction in the assassination of one of the most influential Black leaders of the civil rights era overturned by a judge.
But first he addressed a silent room.
“I do not need this court, these prosecutors or a piece of paper to tell me I am innocent,” he said in a stern voice that did not shake or falter.
“I am an 83-year-old man who was victimized by the criminal justice system.”
Mr. Aziz and his co-defendant, Khalil Islam, were exonerated on Thursday after a review initiated by the Manhattan district attorney, Cyrus R. Vance Jr., found that they had not received a fair trial.
The investigation found that evidence pointing toward their innocence had been withheld by some of the country’s most prominent law enforcement agencies, and that at least some information was suppressed on the order of the longtime director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, J. Edgar Hoover.
But Mr. Aziz, his lawyers and two of Mr. Islam’s sons made it clear on Thursday that they did not think it was a day for celebration, but a moment that reflected a profound injustice administered a half-century earlier in the same courthouse.
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/11/18/
Representatives for the two exonerated men said that the moment meant a lot to Mr. Aziz, and to Mr. Islam’s family.
But Mr. Shanies, one of the civil rights lawyer representing them, said their convictions had a “horrific, torturous and unconscionable” effect that cannot be undone.
The two men spent a combined 42 years in prison, with years in solitary confinement between them.
They were held in some of New York’s worst maximum security prisons in the 1970s, a decade that bore witness to the Attica uprisings.
Mr. Aziz had six children at the time he was convicted; Mr. Islam had three.
Both men saw their marriages fall apart and spent the primes of their lives behind bars.
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/11/18/
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2021/11/18/
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/11/17/
https://www.nytimes.com/video/us/
https://www.nytimes.com/1979/08/19/
Mr. Aziz [ Muhammad A. Aziz, then known as Norman 3X Butler ] in 1965.
Photograph: Associated Press
Exoneration Is ‘Bittersweet’ for Men Cleared in Malcolm X’s Murder An emotional crowd burst into applause in a packed Manhattan courtroom Thursday after the judge threw out the convictions of Muhammad Aziz and Khalil Islam. NYT Published Nov. 18, 2021 Updated Nov. 19, 2021, 8:15 a.m. ET
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/11/18/
Khalil Islam also known as Thomas 15X Johnson (? - 2009)
A judge overturned the convictions of two men found guilty of murder in the assassination of Malcolm X.
One of them, Khalil Islam, is shown in this 1965 photo.
Photograph: Associated Press
Exoneration Is ‘Bittersweet’ for Men Cleared in Malcolm X’s Murder An emotional crowd burst into applause in a packed Manhattan courtroom Thursday after the judge threw out the convictions of Muhammad Aziz and Khalil Islam. NYT Published Nov. 18, 2021 Updated Nov. 19, 2021, 8:15 a.m. ET
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/11/18/
Norman 3X Butler, left, [ Muhammad A. Aziz, then known as Norman 3X Butler ] and Thomas 15X Johnson, right, [ Khalil Islam (? - 2009) also known as Thomas 15X Johnson ] maintained their innocence, but were convicted in Malcolm X’s killing on the testimony of several eyewitnesses, who told conflicting stories. There was no physical evidence against them.
Undated Photographs by Associated Press
2 Men Convicted of Killing Malcolm X Will Be Exonerated Decades Later The 1966 convictions of the two men are expected to be thrown out after a lengthy investigation, validating long-held doubts about who killed the civil rights leader. NYT Nov. 17, 2021 Updated 12:37 p.m. ET
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/11/17/
March 10, 1965
3 Nation of Islam members are indicted in the killing. Mujahid Abdul Halim, a member of the Nation of Islam, was arrested as he fled the ballroom. (He was known as Talmadge Hayer at the time and later as Thomas Hagan.)
Within two weeks, two other men were arrested and later indicted in the killing: Muhammad Abdul Aziz (formerly Norman 3X Butler) and Khalil Islam (also known as Thomas 15X Johnson).
https://www.nytimes.com/live/2021/11/18/
https://www.nytimes.com/live/2021/11/18/
https://www.nytimes.com/1979/08/19/
(who later changed his name to Mujahid Abdul Halim)
Malcolm X’s confessed killer
On Feb. 21, 1965, Mr. Halim, who was then 23, was apprehended after being shot in the thigh in the aftermath of Malcolm X’s assassination.
News photographers captured the chaotic scene as he was carried on a gurney into the emergency room in his underwear, hands covering his face, surrounded by police officers.
Mr. Aziz, then known as Norman 3X Butler, was arrested five days later, and Mr. Islam, known as Thomas 15X Johnson, another five days after that.
Within a week, the three Nation of Islam loyalists had been charged with murder.
But while Mr. Halim confessed on the witness stand to taking part in one of the most consequential and confounding political assassinations in U.S. history, he swore his fellow defendants were innocent.
Mr. Halim (...), who was born Thomas Hagan, served more than four decades in prison for Malcolm X’s murder, earning bachelor’s and master’s degrees behind bars.
He was granted work-release in 1988 and was employed as a counselor for young people and the homeless in New York City.
He was paroled in 2010 after being rejected 16 times and moved in with his family in Brooklyn. Mr. Halim said he and four other men with ties to a mosque in Newark, N.J., had decided to kill Malcolm X because he was a “hypocrite” who had “gone against the leader of the Nation of Islam,” Elijah Muhammad.
He said Mr. Aziz and Mr. Islam were not involved.
Mr. Halim said that after one man shot Malcolm X in the chest with a shotgun, he and another man fired several more rounds at him with handguns.
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/11/17/
One man — Talmadge Hayer, who later changed his name to Mujahid Abdul Halim — was wounded and arrested at the ballroom, and within 10 days, two other men had been arrested:
Mr. Aziz and Mr. Islam, then known as Norman 3X Butler and Thomas 15X Johnson, two members of the Nation of Islam’s Harlem mosque.
https://www.nytimes.com/live/2021/11/18/
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/11/22/
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/11/17/
https://www.nytimes.com/live/2021/11/18/
https://www.nytimes.com/1979/08/19/
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