Exoneration Is ‘Bittersweet’ for Men Cleared in Malcolm X’s Murder (Published 2021) (2024)

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.

“I hope the same system that was responsible for this travesty of justice also takes responsibility for the immeasurable harm it caused to me,” Mr. Aziz said, adding that his conviction was part of a corrupt process “that is all too familiar to Black people, even in 2021.”