Revelations show FBI, New York police behind killing of US Muslim leader Malcolm X

New evidence about the assassination of prominent US civil rights leader Malcolm X has shown that the New York Police Department participated in a conspiracy with the FBI that led to the 1965 killing of the Muslim leader.

Members of Malcolm X's family made public a letter written by a deceased New York police officer stating that the New York Police Department and FBI were behind the killing of the famed Black activist.

The cousin of former undercover NYPD officer Raymond Wood said his late cousin had confessed to him that he had been pressured by his NYPD supervisors to lure members of Malcolm X's security detail into committing crimes that resulted in their arrest just days before the assassination of Malcolm X in New York Harlem.

"Under the direction of my handlers, I was told to encourage leaders and members of the civil rights groups to commit felonious acts," read the letter composed by Wood in 2011.

"It was my assignment to draw the two men into a felonious federal crime so that they could be arrested by the FBI and kept away from managing Malcolm X's Audubon Ballroom door security on February 21st, 1965," the letter stated.

On February 21, 1965, El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz, Malcolm X's Muslim name, without the two bodyguards, was gunned down as he prepared to give a speech at a theater in Harlem, in the north of Manhattan.

An estimated 30,000 mourners attended Malcolm X's funeral in Harlem.

Wood did not want his testimony to become public until after his death and maintained that the New York police department and the FBI kept certain aspects of the case secret.

The FBI has not made any comment yet about the new revelations.

Malcolm X’s daughters have called to reopen an investigation into the murder of prominent Black activist following the new testimony that implicates the FBI and the New York police.

"Any evidence that provides greatest insight into the truth behind that terrible tragedy should be thoroughly investigated," said Ilyasah Shabazz, one of Malcolm X's six daughters.

She said she had always lived with uncertainty around the circumstances of her father's death.

Manhattan District Attorney Cy Vance's office told in a statement its "review of this matter is active and ongoing."

The Manhattan District Attorney's office announced last February that it would review the convictions of two of members of Malcolm X's group who were held responsible for the 1965 killing.

Considered alongside Martin Luther King Jr as one the most influential African Americans in history, Malcolm X was an outspoken Muslim advocate of Black rights.

Malcolm X helped define the struggle for racial equality in the 1960s, and was a powerful orator who rose to prominence as the spokesman of the Nation of Islam, an African-American Muslim group.

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