By Steve Neavling
Nearly six decades after Malcolm X was gunned down in front of his family, his daughters are pursuing justice with a federal lawsuit that accuses the NYPD, FBI, and CIA of contributing to his death.
Filed Friday, the suit alleges the agencies failed to act on known threats against the civil rights leader and deliberately undermined his safety, including removing officers from the ballroom on the day of the killing, The New York Times reports.
“It has taken us a long time to get to this point,” said Ilyasah Shabazz, Malcolm X’s third-eldest daughter, at a news conference.
The family is seeking more than $100 million in damages with the help of attorney Ben Crump.
“We seek justice for the assassination of our father and that the truth will be recorded in history,” Shabazz said.
The suit also alleges “fraudulent concealment and cover-up” by the agencies, accusing them of withholding information from the family and obstructing efforts to identify his killers.
A year before his death, Malcolm X had left the Nation of Islam and founded the Organization of Afro-American Unity.
On Feb. 21, 1965, as he began speaking in Washington Heights, three gunmen rushed the stage and killed him in front of his pregnant wife and three daughters.
Historians have long doubted the official accounts of Malcolm X’s killing. Two of the three men convicted of the crime — Muhammad A. Aziz and Khalil Islam — were exonerated in 2021 after a joint investigation by the Manhattan district attorney’s office and defense lawyers revealed that authorities had withheld key evidence.
Days before Malcolm X’s assassination, his family survived a firebomb attack on their home in Queens.
“A bomb had been thrown into the nursery where his four young daughters were,” Shabazz said Friday.
The lawsuit also names Anthony V. Bouza, a detective on the original investigation, whose estate is a defendant. Bouza once called the investigation “botched” and criticized the NYPD for stonewalling records that could clarify the case.
“For decades, Malcolm X’s wife, Betty Shabazz, the plaintiffs, and their entire family have suffered the pain of the unknown,” the suit states. It accuses law enforcement agencies of creating the conditions that led to Malcolm X’s death and covering up their roles in the aftermath.
The NYPD and FBI declined to comment, and the CIA did not respond.
