Attorneys for Malcolm X’s family announced what they say are “bombshell developments” in the alleged FBI conspiracy to assassinate Malcolm X.
Civil rights lawyer Ben Crump and his co-counsel Ray Hamlin held a press conference in New York City on July 25.
Before introducing a witness that he says was ignored by the FBI, Crump spoke on the government agency’s involvement with Malcolm X prior to his assassination.
Crump and Hamlin announced a $100 million lawsuit earlier this year against several government agencies, including the New York Police Department and the FBI, for their alleged involvement in the civil rights leader’s assassination as well as their “fraudulent concealment” of evidence and coverup.
Malcolm X was assassinated on Feb. 21, 1965, in New York City at the Audubon Ballroom. He was just 39.
Former NYPD officer Raymond Wood said in a deathbed letter that he was ordered to entrap the leader’s security detail and “draw the two men into a felonious federal crime” so the FBI would arrest them, thereby preventing them from protecting Malcolm X with door security.
“At that time, I was not aware that Malcolm X was the target,” wrote Wood.
The two men convicted of killing the leader, Khalil Islam and Muhammad A. Aziz, were later exonerated after their convictions were dismissed by a judge in 2021, but not before they spent 20 years in prison.
Islam died in 2009. Aziz, 84, and Islam’s estate won a $36 million award against the state of New York after the judge ruled that the FBI and NYPD withheld exculpatory evidence from their attorneys.
Crump noted that the head of the FBI, J. Edgar Hoover directed the NYPD to “do something” about the leader prior to his assassination.
It was also later revealed that John Ali Simmons, who was not present at the assassination but was the national secretary for the Nation of Islam was an informant of the FBI, according to the attorney.
“Today as we continue to be able to establish the legal requirements to finally get some measure of justice for Malcolm X’s family, to overcome the statute of limitations, we put forth an exception of fraudulent concealment,” Crump said. “In the fraudulent concealment, we must show that the defendants concealed the existence of a cause of action.
According to Cornell University, fraudulent concealment is to conceal something with “the intent to deceive or defraud the other party.”
“Nobody can say that Malcolm X’s family has never ever accepted what the government tried to tell them. They’ve always sought the truth.”
Crump introduced 84-year-old Mustafa Hassan, a member of Malcolm X’s Organization of Afro-American Unity, who was never interviewed by those investigating the assassination and feared speaking out.
Hassan witnessed the assassination and said that he heard the police ask afterward about a suspected gunman who was being beaten by Malcolm X supporters: “Is he with us?” However, at no time did any law enforcement agency attempt to interview him.
Malcolm X’s daughter Ilyasah Shabazz also spoke at the conference and said she just wanted the truth to be known.
“We simply want the truth to be known,” she said. “What history has recorded is inaccurate.”
