Malcolm X’s family sues CIA, FBI and NYPD for murder

The family of Malcolm X, a civil rights leader who was murdered almost 60 years ago, filed a lawsuit in US federal court for US$100 million this Friday (15).

Family members accuse the FBI, CIA and New York Police Department of allowing the murder to happen.

The lawsuit, filed by the daughter of Malcolm X, Ilyasah Shabazz, and other family members allege that law enforcement agencies withheld evidence that they knew of the plan to kill him but did nothing to stop it.

“We believe they all conspired to murder Malcolm X, one of the greatest thinkers of the 20th century,” said Ben Crump, a civil rights lawyer representing the family, at a press conference.

The wrongful death lawsuit was announced at a memorial at the New York site where Malcolm X was killed. The lawsuit seeks to answer questions surrounding the murder and paint an accurate story of the events, Crump said. And he also intends to bring reparations to the family.

A spokesperson for the New York Police Department was not immediately available for comment, but the department previously told Reuters that I wouldn’t comment the litigation when it was announced last year.

The FBI and CIA did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Malcolm X became known as the national spokesman for the Nation of Islam (NOI), an African-American Muslim group that advocated black separatism.

After more than a decade, he publicly broke with the group in 1964. X moderated some of his earlier views on racial separation, angering some members of the Nation of Islam and receiving death threats.

Talmadge Hayer, then a member of the Nation of Islam, confessed in court to being one of the three killers. But speculation that the government had knowledge of the assassination plot and allowed it to happen has persisted for decades.

Ilyasah Shabazz was just two years old on February 21, 1965, when his father was killed while preparing to speak at New York’s Audubon Ballroom. She was present with her mother and siblings when the murder occurred.

This content was originally published in Malcolm X’s family sues CIA, FBI and New York police for murder on the CNN Brasil website.

Source: CNN Brasil

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