Three of Malcolm X's daughters filed a lawsuit against the FBI, CIA and New York Police Department on Friday, alleging that the three agencies took part in the 1965 assassination of the civil rights leader.
The $100 million lawsuit filed in Manhattan federal court alleges that the agencies were aware of threats on the activist's life, actively encouraged some of those threats and covered up the level of their involvement in his assassination after the fact.
“We believe that they all conspired to assassinate Malcolm X, one of the greatest thought leaders of the 20th century,” attorney Ben Crump said at a press conference announcing the filing.
In a notice of the lawsuit filed earlier this year, X's daughter Ilyasah Shabazz said the agencies “conspired with each other and with other individuals and acted, and failed to act, in such a way as to bring about the wrongful death of Malcolm X.”
Three men were arrested and convicted of the activist's murder, though two of the men were exonerated in 2021 after an investigation found that prosecutors, the FBI and the NYPD withheld evidence from the defendants. Malcolm X's family claims in their lawsuit that this obfuscation is what delayed their filing.
“This cover-up spanned decades, blocking the Shabazz family’s access to the truth and their right to pursue justice,” Crump shared in a statement.
