NEW YORK – A man exonerated in 2021 in the 1965 slaying of Black activist Malcolm X and the estate of a second man cleared posthumously have reached a settlement totaling US$36 million (S$51 million) with New York City and state, their attorney said on Sunday.

Mr Muhammad Aziz, 84, had sought US$40 million after serving about two decades in prison and more than 55 years after being wrongly blamed in the case that raised questions about racism in the criminal justice system. Mr Aziz is married and has six children.

Mr Khalil Islam, who died in 2009 at age 74, also spent more than 20 years in prison and was exonerated in November 2021. His estate has also filed a US$40 million suit.

The city has agreed to pay US$26 million and the state will pay US$10 million, lawyer David Shanies told Reuters. The survivor and the man’s estate will split the settlement.

“Muhammad Aziz, Khalil Islam and their families deserve this for their suffering,” Mr Shanies said. “They suffered a lifetime under the cloud of wrongly being accused of killing a civil rights leader.”

Mr Nick Paolucci, a spokesman for the New York City Law Department, told the New York Times on Sunday: “This settlement brings some measure of justice to individuals who spent decades in prison and bore the stigma of being falsely accused of murdering an iconic figure.”

Malcolm X became prominent as the voice of the Nation of Islam, which espoused Black separatism, before leaving the organisation in 1964 and angering some of its followers. He was shot dead at age 39 in February 1965 while preparing to speak at New York’s Audubon Ballroom.

A third man, Mujahid Halim, was also convicted for the shooting. He testified that Mr Aziz and Mr Islam were innocent. Halim was paroled in 2010. REUTERS