Muhammad Aziz and Khalil Islam have been imprisoned for more than twenty years.

You were convicted of murdering the black activist Malcolm X in 1965.

There were doubts about her guilt from the start, as well as indications that the police and judiciary had manipulated the investigation.

This Thursday, the verdicts are due to be overturned after a nearly two-year investigation by the Manhattan prosecutor's office.

Aziz, who was released from prison in 1985, is now 83 years old.

Islam was set free in 1987 - and died in 2009 at the age of 74.

Cyrus Vance, the departing district attorney for Manhattan, apologized on behalf of his agency, saying that they had abandoned the two men's families.

Majid Sattar

Political correspondent for North America based in Washington.

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The prosecution as well as the FBI and the New York police had withheld evidence exonerating Aziz and Islam.

FBI files that were not presented at the time contained, for example, references to other suspects and a testimony that supported Aziz's alibi.

It was also kept secret at the time that informants were at the scene.

No results on other perpetrators

The investigation, triggered by a new biography and a television documentary, does not come to the conclusion that there was - in the police or even in the government - a conspiracy against the controversial activist. The investigation also does not provide any results about other perpetrators. One of the judgments from 1966 stands: Mujahid Abdul Halim - originally: Thomas Hagan - was imprisoned for 45 years. Unlike the co-defendants, he had pleaded guilty to the trial. He was released in 2010. Halim had always maintained that Aziz and Islam had nothing to do with the crime. In his Brooklyn home, he commented on the decision with the words: "May God bless us: you are relieved."

Malcolm X - actually Malcom Little - was the son of a lay preacher from Nebraska.

While in prison - for breaking into a criminal gang - he came into contact with the “Nation of Islam”, a nationalist and racist Muslim group of black Americans.

He became a charismatic leader of the movement around Elijah Muhammad and a prominent opponent of the civil rights activist Martin Luther King, who preached Christian charity and non-violence.

Later there was a break between Malcolm X and Elijah Muhammad, whom he accused, among other things, of having extramarital affairs with minors.

Malcolm X was under personal protection

Malcolm X resigned from the Nation of Islam in 1964 and founded his own group, the Organization of Afro-American Unity. He traveled to the Middle East and Africa and made contacts with the anti-colonialist movement. Because of his conflict with the “Nation of Islam” he was threatened and under personal protection. Malcolm X said shortly before his death that he believed his previous organization wanted to kill him.

In February 1965, he was scheduled to deliver a speech at the Audubon Ballroom in the Washington Heights neighborhood of Manhattan. Shortly after he spoke, an argument broke out in the audience. In the chaos that followed, a man first approached the stage and shot Malcolm X with a rifle; it was followed by two more riflemen who fired semi-automatic pistols. The autopsy report later stated that Malcolm X had been hit by 21 bullets. The shooter Halim was overwhelmed by the audience and handed over to the police. The other two riflemen managed to submerge themselves in the general chaos.

Aziz was arrested five days later, Islam ten days after the attack.

In the trial, prosecutors alleged that Islam, who used to be the driver of Malcolm X, opened fire in the ballroom and fired the fatal shot.

The others would then have fired their pistols.

Ten eyewitnesses identified Aziz and Islam as Sagittarius.

Both men, however, had alibis confirmed by their wives and friends.

Halim, who had stated that the murder occurred because of the criticism of Elijah Muhammad, not only testified that the two co-defendants were innocent.

He also incriminated a member of the Nation of Islam by the name of William Bradley.

His lawyer denied that he had committed the attack.

Bradley died three years ago.