The daughters of US civil rights activist Malcolm X, murdered in 1965, have called for a full new investigation into the attack. Over the weekend, they relied on newly emerged evidence that suggests that the New York police and the FBI were involved in the attack. All evidence on the case would have to be „thoroughly checked“, demanded Ilyasah Shabazz, one of the civil rights activist’s six daughters, at a press conference.
A spokesman for the prosecutor in New York said in response to a request from the AFP news agency that a new investigation into the murder case was „ongoing“. The New York FBI office did not respond to AFP’s request.
Malcolm X was shot dead on February 21, 1965 while performing in Harlem, New York. During the press conference on Saturday, a letter was read from a deceased policeman alleging that the New York police and the FBI were complicit in the murder. The late official Raymond Wood did not want his statements on the case to be published until after his death.
Three men sentenced for life
As an undercover agent, Wood is said to have lured the two bodyguards of the Malcolm X into a trap. The two bodyguards were arrested a few days before the murder. When he appeared in Harlem, the civil rights activist was without a bodyguard. He was shot dead when he was about to start giving a speech.
Three men were sentenced to life imprisonment for the attack. One of them, Thomas Hagan, confessed to the crime, but described the other two convicts as innocent. Hagan was released in 2010 after granting a petition for clemency that he had submitted.
He was formerly a member of the African-American, Muslim movement Nation of Islam, of which Malcolm X was a leader. One of the other two convicts died in prison in 2009. The third convict was released on parole in 1985.
