A man answering to the name Mujahid Halim responded to the exoneration of two men convicted alongside him in 1966 for Malcolm X’s murder with a relieved benediction, delivered quietly through a closed door.
“God bless you, they’re exonerated,” the man said in response to a reporter’s question on Wednesday, after the Manhattan district attorney, Cyrus R. Vance Jr., acknowledged that Muhammad A. Aziz and Khalil Islam did not get a fair trial. Mr. Vance plans on asking a judge for a reversal of the convictions.
When Mr. Halim admitted to the court that he had taken part in assassination, he was known as Talmadge Hayer in 1966. He did not cooperate with the district attorney’s review of the evidence, according to prosecutors and defense lawyers.
The man who identified himself as Mr. Halim did not open the door to his first-floor apartment in Brooklyn’s Sunset Park neighborhood. The door was decorated with a single bumper sticker that read “Prophets of Islam.” A mat at its base depicted roses and read, “Live, Laugh, Love.”
“We’re nonpolitical,” he said. He could be heard locking the doors, although he declined to speak more.
On Feb. 21, 1965, Mr. Halim, who was then 23, was apprehended after being shot in the thigh in the aftermath of Malcolm X’s assassination. The scene was captured by news photographers as he was carried in his underwear and surrounded by police officers to the emergency room.
Five days later, Mr. Aziz (then known as Norman 3X Butler) was arrested, and Mr. Islam (then known as Thomas 15X Johnson) was taken into custody five days later. Within one week, the three Nation of Islam loyalists were charged with murder.
While Mr. Halim admitted to participating in one of the most consequential assassinations in American history, he also vowed that he and his co-defendants were innocent
Mr. Halim, 80, who was born Thomas Hagan, served more than four decades in prison for Malcolm X’s murder, earning bachelor’s and master’s degrees behind bars.
In 1988, he was granted work-release and worked as a counselor for homeless youth in New York City. After being rejected 16 times, he was paroled in 2010, and moved in with his family to Brooklyn.
In a 1977 affidavit, Mr. Halim said he and four other men with ties to a mosque in Newark, N.J., had decided to kill Malcolm X because he was a “hypocrite” who had “gone against the leader of the Nation of Islam,” Elijah Muhammad. He stated that Mr. Aziz, Mr. Islam and other men were not involved.
Mr. Halim said that Malcolm X was shot in his chest with a shotgun by one man. Then, another man fired several rounds with handguns at him.
In an interview with the New York Post in 2008, Mr. Halim stated he believed that he deserved to be freed. He said that he was still a faithful Muslim but had broken with the Nation of Islam.
“It wasn’t really a correct ideology,” he said.
Source: NY Times
