The daughter of slain black leader Malcolm X, Ilyasah Shabazz, announced a lawsuit against the NYPD, FBI and CIA, which she says conspired in the shooting death of his father, in 1965, an announcement he made on the 58th anniversary of the activist’s shooting death today. According to the lawsuit, federal and city public employees and agencies conspired with each other and with other individuals “and acted or failed to act in such a manner as to cause the death of Malcolm X,” shot to death by three men as he was about to give a speech at the Audubon Ballroom on February 21, 1965, at an event attended by his wife and daughter.

“Today we will celebrate our father’s life and legacy with the community because it’s something my mother did every year. Also we will seek justice for a very young man who gave his life for human rights,” Shabazz said at a press conference at the site where he was assassinated and which is now a Malcolm X memorial in Upper Manhattan. His lawyer Ben Crump recalled the connection between his death and federal and New York government agencies has long been under suspicion.

According to the legal document, as a result of local and federal employees and agencies acting “deliberately”, with “bad faith”, “without sense” or “recklessly”, the applicant, who was two years old at the time of Malcolm X’s death, was deprived of her father, financial support, and spiritual and emotional guidance, and as a result suffered pain and mental anguish. The document further indicates that after her death, federal and local employees and agencies “knowingly and fraudulently” withheld information, factual evidence and exculpatory evidence from the plaintiff and her family.

He also alleges that they acted in concert to prevent their conduct, actions and planning of the death of the civil rights leader from being known. The plaintiff, who is seeking compensation of $100 million, says in the document that she is filing this action after learning that evidence was withheld from her that government employees and agencies “conspired and carried out their plan to assassinate Malcolm X.” In February 2021, three daughters of Malcolm X -Qubiliah, Ilyasah and Gamilah Shabazz- announced that they had received a posthumous confession from a police officer that implicated the NYPD and the FBI in his murder, and then asked that the case be reopened.

That confession -presented by a relative- was that of a former undercover police officer, identified as Raymond Wood, who in a letter confessed that Police and FBI conspired to “undermine” the civil rights movement, and that his mission had been to infiltrate it to encourage its leaders and members to commit crimes and thus justify actions against them. Three men were convicted in 1966 for their alleged connection to the assassination of Malcolm X, but in November 2021 a court proved their innocence and they were released, although one of them had already died. According to what the Manhattan prosecutor, Cyrus Vance, said in court, the FBI and the New York Police concealed evidence that would have helped the defendants’ defense.