(ANSA) - NEW YORK, FEBRUARY 22 - Malcolm X's family is launching a one hundred million dollar lawsuit accusing the New York police, the CIA and the FBI of responsibility for the death of the leader of the 'Nation of Islam'.
Daughter Ilyasah Shabazz claims New York and federal agencies "fraudulently hid evidence of their role in the plan to assassinate Malcolm X."
At a press conference in the place where she, just two years old, saw her father die murdered, Shabazz recalled that "for years the family has fought for the truth about the murder to come to light".
The CIA and the FBI did not react to the action while the New York police closed in behind a comment.
Malcolm X rose to prominence as the national spokesman for the Nation of Islam, a group of African-American Muslims who preached black separatism.
When, after a decade at the helm of the group, he had detached himself from it to more moderate positions, death threats had begun.
On February 21, 1965, three men, all African Americans, opened fire at the Audubon Ballroom in Harlem.
Malcolm passed away at 39 in front of his pregnant wife and three of his daughters.
Of the men originally convicted of the murders, two were eventually cleared in November 2021 of failing to commit the crime and one of them, who is still alive, sued last year over decades spent in prison.
The third, Talmadge Hayer, the only one who had confessed, had been 'paroled' eleven years earlier.
"Serious mistakes" were made in the investigation and during the trial by investigators and investigators from the FBI and the New York police who allegedly covered up part of the evidence of their innocence, former New York prosecutor Cyrus Vance had admitted two years ago, paving the way for the review of one of the most sensational murder cases of the 1960s.
Now it's Malcolm X's daughters who have raised the ball: they want to know how things really went and why their father wasn't adequately protected.
(HANDLE).
