Malcolm X’s family is suing the FBI, CIA and NYPD for $100 million over his murder | Malcolm X

The family of Malcolm X, the militant civil rights leader who was assassinated nearly 60 years ago, filed a $100 million federal lawsuit on Friday accusing the FBI, CIA and the New York Police Department (NYPD) of allowing his murder.

The lawsuit, filed by Malcolm X’s daughter Ilyasah Shabazz and other family members, alleges that law enforcement concealed evidence they knew about the plan to kill him but failed to act to stop it.

“We believe they all conspired to assassinate Malcolm X, one of the greatest thought leaders of the 20th century,” Ben Crump, a civil rights attorney representing the family, said at a news conference.

The wrongful death suit was announced at a memorial center at the site in New York City where Malcolm X was killed in 1965. It seeks to answer questions surrounding the assassination and paint an accurate story of the events, Crump said.

“As a direct result of the defendants’ willful, bad faith, willful, wanton, wanton, unreasonable, and/or knowingly indifferent acts and omissions, Malcolm X was deprived of his federal constitutional rights, deprived of his life and liberty, and sustained severe physical, emotional and financial damages, including intentional physical pain and suffering,” the lawsuit states.

The case is also intended to bring compensation to the family. There was no comment from the FBI, CIA or NYPD Friday afternoon.

“This cover-up spanned decades and blocked the Shabazz family’s access to the truth and their right to pursue justice,” Crump said in a statement. “We are making history by standing here to confront these mistakes and seek accountability in the courts.”

Malcolm X rose to prominence as the national spokesman for the Nation of Islam, an African-American Muslim group that advocated black separatism.

After more than a decade with the group, he publicly broke with it in 1964. He moderated some of his earlier views on racial segregation, angering some Nation of Islam members and issuing death threats.

Talmadge Hayer, then a member of the Nation of Islam, confessed in court to being one of the three assassins. But speculation that the government may have been aware of the assassination plot and allowed it to happen has persisted for decades.

Shabazz was two years old on February 21, 1965, when she, her mother and her siblings witnessed her father being shot and killed while preparing to speak at New York’s Audubon Ballroom in the Washington Heights neighborhood of Manhattan.

The Associated Press contributed reporting