Over 50 years after they were wrongfully convicted for the murder of Malcolm X, Muhammad Aziz and the late Khalil Islam have had their names cleared. Two of their attorneys, Innocence Project co-founder Barry Scheck and civil rights attorney David Shanies, joined Jim Braude on Greater Boston to discuss the case and its historical impact.
“They had all this information in their possession,” Scheck said about the FBI and NYPD.
“If they had done what they were supposed to do — and that is disclose to the district attorney, and then the district attorney had then disclosed that to the defense and to the court — the fact of the matter is, that would have changed the course of the civil rights movement in this country.”
That could have exposed operations like COINTELPRO, the undercover effort to disrupt the Black power movement and civil rights movement, Scheck says.
WATCH: Two men cleared of wrongful convictions for Malcolm X's murder
