Witness claims police said ‘Is he one of us?’ as they restrained Malcolm X killer

Mustafa Hassan, center, with civil rights attorney Ben Crump, third left, and Ilyasah Shabazz, second left, at a press conference in New York on Tuesday. Photograph: Ed Jones/AFP/Getty Images

A witness to the 1965 assassination of Malcolm X has come forward to claim that a comment he overheard as police were restraining assassin Thomas Hagan outside the Audubon Ball room proved to him that the New York police department and FBI knew beforehand that there would be an attempt on the civil rights activist’s life.

Mustafa Hassan said he heard an officer ask of Hagan, “Is he one of us?”