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Russian and U.S. negotiators will sit down for talks early next year to discuss Moscowxe2x80x99s demand for Western guarantees precluding NATOxe2x80x99s expansion to Ukraine, Russiaxe2x80x99s top diplomat said Wednesday.

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Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said that Russia in January will also start separate talks with NATO to discuss the issue, adding that separate negotiations under the auspices of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe will also be held.

Last week, Moscow submitted draft security documents demanding that NATO deny membership to Ukraine and other former Soviet countries and roll back the alliancexe2x80x99s military deployments in Central and Eastern Europe. Washington and its allies have refused to provide such pledges, but said they are ready for the talks.

Moscow presented the demands amid soaring tensions over a Russian troop buildup near Ukraine that has stoked fears of a possible invasion. U.S. President Joe Biden warned Russian President Vladimir Putin in a conference call earlier this month that Russia will face xe2x80x9csevere consequencesxe2x80x9d if it attacks Ukraine.

Putin has denied having plans to launch an attack but has described NATOxe2x80x99s expansion to Ukraine and weapons deployment of the alliance weapons there as a xe2x80x9cred line.xe2x80x9d

xe2x80x9cWe donxe2x80x99t want a war,xe2x80x9d Lavrov said Wednesday. xe2x80x9cWe donxe2x80x99t want to take the path of confrontation. But we will firmly ensure our security using the means we consider necessary.xe2x80x9d

Speaking in a live interview with Russian RT television, Lavrov hailed Washingtonxe2x80x99s xe2x80x9cbusiness-likexe2x80x9d approach that helped quickly agree on parameters of the future talks.

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He added that Moscow would be ready to consider Washingtonxe2x80x99s demands, but warned that the talks mustnxe2x80x99t drag out indefinitely.

xe2x80x9cI hope that they will take us seriously given the moves we take to ensure our defense capability,xe2x80x9d he said.

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said Tuesday that Washington is working with its European allies to address what he called xe2x80x9cRussian aggressionxe2x80x9d with diplomacy but said Biden opposes the kind of guarantees sought by Putin.

xe2x80x9cThe president has been extremely clear for many, many years about some basic principles that no one is moving back on: the principle that one country does not have the right to change by force the borders of another, that one country does not have the right to dictate the policies of another or to tell that that country with whom they may associate,xe2x80x9d Blinken told reporters in Washington. xe2x80x9cOne country does not have the right to exert a sphere of influence. That notion should be relegated to the dustbin of history.xe2x80x9d

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov also hailed reaching a quick agreement on the start of the talks, but noted that they should be xe2x80x9caimed at reaching concrete results and not become drawn out.xe2x80x9d He added that Moscow expects Washington to present a detailed platform for the talks and be ready for a constructive discussion.

xe2x80x9cWe want these talks,xe2x80x9d he said in a conference call with reporters. xe2x80x9cAnd, certainly, the talks are held to discuss each otherxe2x80x99s positions.xe2x80x9d

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The Omicron variant is now causing about three in four new COVID-19 cases nationwide, and 90% of cases in at least five states, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) announced on Monday.

In New York and New Jersey, the Midwest, the Southeast, the Gulf Coast, and the Northwest, the Omicron variant now account for more than 90 percent of new cases.

While other regions currently have lower Omicron prevalence, the variant is spreading fast enough that officials expect it will be dominant throughout the country within weeks.

Omicron spreads three to five times as fast as the Delta variant, scientists estimate.

Even if it causes more mild disease, high numbers of cases can still create an enormous burden for already-overstretched hospitals.

The Omicron variant was first identified in South Africa and Botswana in late November.xc2xa0Within a month, it’s become the dominant variant in the U.S.

Omicron’s capacity to spread more rapidly than any other variant has allowed it to take over in a matter of weeks, new CDC data show.

As of December 18, the Omicron variant is causing 73 percent of new Covid cases nationwide.

That’s about a six-fold increase from the prior week, when it caused 13 percent of new cases.

The CDC also updated its estimates for previous weeks, showing that Omicron was causing 0.1 percent of new Covid cases in the week ending November 27.

In other words, Omicron was already in the U.S. and spreading widely on Thanksgiving.

The New York City area has been a clear Omicron hotspot in recent weeks.

Last week, the CDC announced that Omicron was causing 13 percent of new Covid cases in New York and New Jersey.

This week, the CDC reports that 92 percent of new Covid cases in the region are caused by Omicron.

New York state has reported record Covid cases in recent days, and average daily case counts in NYC more than doubled during the week ending December 17.

‘We’re going to see a really fast upsurge in cases, we’re going to see a lot of New Yorkers affected by omicron,’ Mayor Bill de Blasio said in a public Covid update on Monday.xc2xa0

Omicron’s spread in NYC was likely aided by Anime NYC, an anime convention held in Manhattan during the weekend before Thanksgiving.

Several Omicron cases have been connected to the convention, including among attendees who traveled from other states.

While NYC’s surge has dominated headlines, the new CDC data also show that other regions are experiencing similarly high Omicron levels.

Omicron is causing 95 percent of new Covid cases in the national health agency’s Southeast region, which includes Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Tennessee.

Last week, health officials in Orlando, Florida found that the surrounding county’s wastewater samples were dominated by Omicron – even though the variant had yet to be identified in many clinical cases.

Hospital systems in Florida are anticipating a surge in cases, the Orlando Sentinel reports.

In several Midwestern states, Omicron is causing 92 percent of new cases: Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Minnesota, Ohio, and Wisconsin.

Michigan hospitals are already overwhelmed, as the state has seen record case and hospitalization numbers in recent weeks – higher than at any other point in the pandemic.

Similarly in the Gulf Coast, Omicron is causing 92 percent of new cases. This region includes Texas, Arkansas, Louisiana, New Mexico, and Oklahoma.

On Monday, Texas officials reported that an Omicron patient had died. The patient, a man in his 50s, was unvaccinated.

The case is the first Omicron death to be reported in the U.S.

Texas and surrounding states are bracing for a surge of Omicron cases, though hospitalization numbers are currently lower than in other regions.

The Northwest – Washington, Oregon, Idaho, and Alaska – has the highest share of cases caused by Omicron of any region, at 96 percent.

Idaho’s Panhandle region emerged from crisis standards of care on Monday after more than 100 days in this precarious position, according to the Idaho Capital Sun.

‘While this is good news for Idaho, we’re still watching the omicron variant very closely because this is a precarious time,’ said Dave Jeppesen, director of Idaho’s public health department.

‘Omicron seems to spread more easily between people,’ he said, ‘and we all need to keep taking precautions against COVID-19 by getting vaccinated or getting a booster dose, wearing masks in crowded areas, physically distancing from others, washing our hands frequently, and staying home if we’re sick to avoid overwhelming our health care systems again.’

New England, the mid-Atlantic region, parts of the Midwest, and the Southwest all have lower shares of cases caused by Omicron, according to CDC data.

The region including Iowa, Kansas, Missouri, and Nebraska has the lowest share of Omicron cases, at 30 percent.

Still, at the rate that Omicron has spread through the country, even this region will likely be dominated by the variant within the next week.

Scientists estimate that Omicron spreads three to five times as fast as Delta, making it the most highly contagious variant by far.

Preliminary research has shown that Omicron may cause more mild disease than other variants.

One South African study found that Omicron patients had a 29 percent lower risk of hospitalization than patients infected in the country’s spring 2020 wave.

However, because Omicron is so transmissible, scientists are concerned that the U.S. could see such a high number of cases in such a short time that hospitals are still overwhelmed by the variant.

Booster shots can aid in protecting against Omicron infection, studies have shown, while one or two vaccine doses reduce the risk of severe disease from this variant.

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Regularly compared to Nazi doctor Josef Mengele, Dr. Wouter Basson was in charge of a top-secret South African biological warfare program behind numerous killings, poisonings, and kidnappings in the 1980s.

xe2x80x9cMedicine is my profession; war is my hobby.xe2x80x9d While you might not expect words like these to come from the mouth of a cardiologist, Dr. Wouter Basson of South Africa is no ordinary medical practitioner. In fact, when Basson oversaw his governmentxe2x80x99s top-secret Project Coast during the 1980s, it was his job to develop biological weapons intended to initiate a state-sponsored genocide.

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Among other acts of terror, this apartheid-era program worked on xe2x80x9crace-specificxe2x80x9d bioweapons designed to either pacify, sterilize, or even kill South Africanxe2x80x99s non-white populations. After apartheid ended in the 1990s, the countryxe2x80x99s new leadership declared, xe2x80x9cIf ever there was a program that truly typified the genocidal programs of the apartheid regime, this was it.xe2x80x9d

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Despite such atrocities, Basson was only first introduced to the world outside South Africa in a 2001 article by The New Yorker titled xe2x80x9cThe Poison Keeper.xe2x80x9d

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xe2x80x9cSouth Africans call him Dr. Death,xe2x80x9d the article began. xe2x80x9cHexe2x80x99s a decorated former Army brigadier and, in civilian life, an eminent cardiologist, and was the founder and leader of Project Coast, a top-secret chemical and biological warfare program.xe2x80x9d

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But even after coming to international attention for perpetrating some of the worst of apartheidxe2x80x99s horrors, Dr. Wouter Basson got away with it all.

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How Wouter Basson Blossomed In The Apartheid Era

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Apartheid, which is Afrikaans for xe2x80x9capartness,xe2x80x9d was a system of political and economic discrimination waged against non-Europeans during the era of white minority rule in South Africa. Introduced in South Africa in 1948, apartheid forced non-white racial groups to live separately from Europeans and attempted to halt any social integration between racial groups.

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South African president F.W. de Klerk repealed most apartheid legislation in the early 1990s and a new constitution that enfranchised non-white South Africans went into effect in 1994, formally ending the institutionalized racism. That same year also saw the establishment of a coalition black-majority government that led to Nelson Mandelaxe2x80x99s inauguration as the countryxe2x80x99s first black president.

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But back in the days of apartheid, South Africa was rife with state-sponsored racism xe2x80x94 and Wouter Basson was one of the men who put that into practice.

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Dr. Wouter Basson was born on July 6, 1950, near Cape Town, South Africa. He graduated medical school from the University of Pretoria in 1974 and joined the South African Defense Force (SADF, the countryxe2x80x99s armed forces) in 1975.

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By the early 1980s, Dr. Basson had risen to the rank of major and was asked to head the SADFxe2x80x99s top-secret chemical and biological weapons program. He accepted and headed that program, Project Coast, for the next 12 years.

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It was here that Wouter Basson would commit his most horrific acts.

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State-Sponsored Genocide With Toxic Milk And Whiskey

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Project Coast was established in 1981 by South Africaxe2x80x99s Ministry of Defense under the direction of then Prime Minister P.W. Botha.

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Dr. Wouter Basson headed the operation and recruited some 200 professionals to participate, including high-ranking members of the South African Defense Force, scientists, and doctors. The project was initially presented as a defense-oriented research program meant to protect the country from enemies of the state.

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What it really did was manufacture chemical and biological means of neutralizing anti-apartheid activists and preventing non-white populations from growing.

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Among his deadly concoctions, Dr. Basson developed anthrax cigarettes, toxic milk, water, and whiskey, and poisoned tools and umbrellas. The idea was that these objects would be distributed in large quantities to the unwitting masses, who would thus be dispatched in secret.

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Sometimes, however, Bassonxe2x80x99s methods werenxe2x80x99t so secretive. In one operation that killed close to 200 Namibian prisoners of war, the victims were reportedly injected with incapacitating amounts of muscle relaxers and then dumped into the ocean from a helicopter.

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But even when Bassonxe2x80x99s toxic products werenxe2x80x99t being deployed, they were wreaking havoc in the testing phase alone. In fact, prisoners of war were often used as test subjects and left to die in remote areas.

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In one particularly shocking case, Basson was involved in a plot to lace Nelson Mandelaxe2x80x99s medication with thallium, xe2x80x9ca toxic heavy metal that can permanently impair brain function,xe2x80x9d before his release from prison in 1990.

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When death wasnxe2x80x99t the objective, the project also focused on synthesizing xe2x80x9crace-specific bacterial weaponsxe2x80x9d to sterilize South Africaxe2x80x99s non-white population.

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Dr. Schalk Van Rensburg, the former director of Roodeplaat Research Laboratories, testified before South Africaxe2x80x99s Truth and Reconciliation Commission (a post-apartheid court-like body that allowed victims and witnesses to testify and perpetrators to undergo questioning or request amnesty for past crimes) that within two weeks of joining up with Project Coast:

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xe2x80x9cI realized this is not defensive work; this is offensive work. The most frequent instruction we obtained from Doctor Bassonxe2x80xa6was to develop something with which you could kill an individual which would make his death resemble a natural death, and that something was not to be detectable in a normal forensic laboratory.xe2x80x9d

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While testimony like this has shed some light on Wouter Bassonxe2x80x99s crimes with Project Coast in the 1980s, much of his wrongdoing has surely remained under the veil of apartheid-era secrecy to this day.

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Cooking Ecstasy To Pacify Entire Populations

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To grasp the full horror of Project Coast, one need look no further than the words of Wouter Basson himself: xe2x80x9cIxe2x80x99m not going to say I did it because I was told to,xe2x80x9d he told TimesLive in 2016.

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xe2x80x9cSome of it I wasnxe2x80x99t. I am not going to hide. It was my job, and whatever I did was not wrong. I am surprised and amazed at the hysteria surrounding my case.xe2x80x9d

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Indeed, once the project seemingly closed up shop, Basson remained unrepentant xe2x80x94 and even channeled his efforts into other ventures.

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When Project Coast wrapped up in 1991, Basson moved on to producing drugs like ecstasy (MDMA) and deploy them in ways that would xe2x80x9cpacifyxe2x80x9d non-white populations.

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These nonlethal xe2x80x9cpartyxe2x80x9d drugs were being synthesized by scientists at a research lab called Delta G, though it was likely just a front company for Project Coast.

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Some of these low-level scientists were told they were making rocket fuel, others were told they were creating substances for xe2x80x9ccrowd controlxe2x80x9d xe2x80x94 but, to be sure, they were involved in Bassonxe2x80x99s plot to keep non-whites down with 98 percent pure MDMA.

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Nevertheless, Basson maintained that he was only working on methods of xe2x80x9ccrowd controlxe2x80x9d during his eventual trials, which finally began under South Africaxe2x80x99s post-apartheid leadership in the 1990s.

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xe2x80x9cI Was A Soldierxe2x80x9d: The Trials Of Wouter Basson

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In court, Basson defended his actions and portrayed himself as a foot soldier for the apartheid government. For example, during an interview published the day before his trial began, Bousson said: xe2x80x9cMy defense in court will be the truth. Whatever I did, I did because it was correct at the time.xe2x80x9d He continued:

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xe2x80x9cWhat I did was for the good of the country, for things like crowd control. They said doctors shouldnxe2x80x99t get involved, but I was a soldier like any other doing my job. If you want to attack me or associate me with what happened in the army, then you must also look to more than 3,000 other doctors who did national service and willingly fired weapons at people.xe2x80x9d

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Dr. Bassonxe2x80x99s trial began on Oct. 4, 1999, in Pretoria, South Africa. He was initially charged with 67 crimes that included 229 murders, conspiracy to commit murder, drug possession, drug trafficking, embezzlement, fraud, and theft, much of which stemmed from his work as the leader of Project Coast.

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Judge Willie Hartzenberg dismissed conspiracy charges related to the deaths of 200 individuals in Namibia after ruling that South African courts lacked the jurisdiction to try Dr. Basson for crimes committed outside the country.

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Additionally, the judge dismissed four murder charges in South Africa and 18 months later, he reduced the total number of charges to 46.

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After a marathon trial of three years, three months, and 18 days, Judge Hartzenberg ruled that the state fell far short of the standard in proving their case xe2x80x9cbeyond a reasonable doubt.xe2x80x9d He thus dismissed the remaining charges against Dr. Basson. Prosecutors appealed the judgment, but in 2003 South Africaxe2x80x99s Supreme Court of Appeal refused to grant a new trial.

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How exactly Basson got away with all of it remains somewhat baffling to this day. He only called one witness xe2x80x94 himself xe2x80x94 and often admitted guilt while simply saying he was following othersxe2x80x99 leads, but still, he walked free. Some say the judge was on his side, but the casexe2x80x99s outcome nevertheless remains a shocking victory for Basson to this day.

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How Basson Escapes Justice Even Today

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Though Basson evaded punishment for his Project Coast crimes, he has been periodically embroiled in legal trouble ever since. In 2006, the Health Professions Council of South Africa (HPCSA) opened a new investigation into him and filed seven charges against him the following year for a smattering of crimes from his Project Coast days.

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In January 2012, after a lengthy delay, the HPCSA dismissed two charges and part of a third charge, and a date for a hearing on the remaining four charges was scheduled for March of that year.

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After those proceedings finally concluded on Dec. 18, 2013, it seemed as though justice had finally been served when Dr. Basson was found guilty of all four counts of unprofessional conduct.

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But on March 27, 2019, Gauteng High Court Judge Sulet Potterill ruled that there was bias on the part of two of the committee members who presided over the HPCSA hearing and that both committee members must recuse themselves from any future disciplinary hearings. The result was that the HPCSA must initiate disciplinary hearings against Dr. Basson from scratch if they intend to continue their review of him.

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With the courts on his side once again, it seems like Dr. Death may continue to escape justice again and again.

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After this look at Dr. Wouter Basson, read about the Australian genocide against Aboriginals. Then, check out these 35 disturbing photos from the heydey of eugenics.

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Last week in New York City, a state court judge dismissed the first-degree murder convictions of two men who each served more than 20 years in prison for the 1965 killing of Malcolm X. One of those wrongly convicted men wasnxe2x80x99t even alive to hear the government apologize. Cyrus R. Vance Jr., the current Manhattan district attorney, offered an apology on behalf of law enforcement which he stated, xe2x80x9cfailed the families of the two men.xe2x80x9d

Now, 56 years after the murder of the fiery African American minister and former spokesman for the Black nationalist group, the Nation of Islam, the exonerations of Muhammad A. Aziz, now 83, and Khalil Islam, who died at 74 in 2009, leave us with more questions than answers, especially questions related to the conduct of law enforcement agencies. Previous suspects who were never arrested are dead. So we shouldnxe2x80x99t limit ourselves to asking, xe2x80x9cWho did it?xe2x80x9d The bigger question is xe2x80x9cWhy was the truth suppressed?xe2x80x9d

A 22-month joint investigation by Vancexe2x80x99s office, lawyers for Aziz and Islam, the Innocence Project and civil rights attorney David A. Shanies, revealed that prosecutors, the New York City Police Department and the FBI withheld evidence that would likely have led to the two menxe2x80x99s acquittal. Their findings seemed to support what a third man convicted in the shooting death of Malcolm X has been saying all along. Mujahid Abdul Halim, an 80-year-old former member of the Nation of Islam, confessed in open court that he was one of the killers, but he also emphatically asserted that Aziz and Islam were not the other men involved.

While the recent investigation led to the formal exonerations, the credit for prompting the governmentxe2x80x99s action xe2x80x94 or maybe publicly shaming officials into action xe2x80x94 belongs to amateur historian, activist and investigative journalist Abdur-Rahman Muhammad whose Netflix docu-series xe2x80x9cWho Killed Malcolm X?xe2x80x9d exposed glaring gaps in the case.

Some of the investigative findings that led officials to conclude that Aziz and Islam were wrongfully convicted include:

• FBI documents implicating other Nation of Islam suspects and lessening suspicions about Islam and Aziz, then known, respectively, as Thomas 15X Johnson and Norman 3X Butler.
• State prosecutorxe2x80x99s notes revealing a failure to disclose the presence of undercover officers at the time of the shooting.
• NYPD files documenting that a New York Daily News reporter received a call the morning of the shooting from someone indicating Malcolm X would be murdered.
• An interview of a still-living witness who continued to confirm Azizxe2x80x99s alibi: that he was home when the shooting happened.

We may never learn who the other killers were. But the bigger question may be why this case was, at best, horribly flawed xe2x80x93 and at worst xe2x80x93 deliberately deceiving. Deborah Francois, lawyer for Islam and Aziz, told The New York Times, xe2x80x9cThis wasnxe2x80x99t mere oversight. This was a product of extreme and gross official misconduct.xe2x80x9d

While the recent inquiry found no evidence that the police or FBI conspired to kill Malcolm X, their conduct raises important questions: Did authorities have intelligence indicating Malcolm X, whoxe2x80x99d left the Nation of Islam and excoriated its leader Elijah Muhammad for fathering eight children with six teenage girls, was being targeted for murder by the Nation of Islam but fail to act on it?

Malcolm X was perceived as a dangerous radical who, while he served as the most outspoken member of the Nation of Islam, had promoted the groupxe2x80x99s theology of innate black superiority over whites and had, at least then, referred to Caucasians as xe2x80x9cdevils.xe2x80x9d Is it possible that law enforcement, aware of the Nation of Islamxe2x80x99s growing animosity toward Malcolm X, found it convenient to ignore signs of the groupxe2x80x99s plans to assassinate him, thereby allowing the elimination of a radical firebrand it viewed as a security threat?

Was the failure to disclose the presence of undercover officers at the site of the shooting merely a security safeguard to facilitate continued covert operations against the Nation of Islam, or, is it possible those undercover officers had learned of the plans to kill Malcolm X and did nothing to stop it from happening?

Did the original murder investigators deliberately ignore a strong suspect they had identified xe2x80x93 a Nation of Islam xe2x80x9cenforcerxe2x80x9d named William Bradley xe2x80x93 because Bradley, or other suspects, were police informants?

Or was the original investigation lacking rigor because the mostly-white law enforcement organizations and the mostly-white media organizations of that day not care much about a crime within the Black community, especially one that claimed the life of a leader who had spoken so negatively about white people?

Maybe the most important question that remains is whether anything has changed to make this kind of law enforcement misconduct less likely. Even as we continue to question the credibility of our justice system, nearly 60 years after Malcolm X was assassinated, there are encouraging developments. Police departments suspected of unlawful investigations are subject to U.S. Department of Justice patterns and practices inquiries. At the FBI, the abuses of power by former FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover, who ruled his agency for 40 years and was in charge when Malcolm X was killed, led to strict regulations governing domestic operations. Wiretaps now require court authorization, and undercover operations must adhere to high-level oversight.

Layers of review within the FBI, the Justice Department and Congress donxe2x80x99t eliminate possible wrongdoing, but greatly reduce the chances. All FBI new agent and intelligence analyst classes study the dangers of authoritarian regimes and travel to the Holocaust Museum. Those same classes include in-depth study of the FBIxe2x80x99s abuses during its investigation of Martin Luther King, and those employees pay a visit to the MLK Memorial in Washington. The FBI has an official historian who chronicles the agencyxe2x80x99s past abuses and shares them in presentations to classes at the FBI Academy.

The Manhattan DAxe2x80x99s office did the right thing in leading the inquiry that exonerated Aziz and Islam. Itxe2x80x99s proof that the system, though flawed, is capable of correcting itself. Moving forward, wexe2x80x99ll need proof that measures are implemented to trigger regular review of police and prosecutor files in controversial convictions where contrary evidence exists. We shouldnxe2x80x99t have to rely on Netflix to force corrective court actions that come way too late to be construed as anything resembling justice.

A Black man wrongly convicted of murdering Malcolm X is suing New York state for $20 million.

Muhammed Aziz, now 83, spent 20 years behind bars on a first-degree murder charge in Malcolm Xxe2x80x99s death. He was convicted alongside two other men, Mujahid Halim and Khalil Islam, in 1966.

Aziz was released in 1985. Islam was released in 1987 and died in 2009.

xe2x80x9cAs a result of his wrongful conviction and imprisonment, Mr. Aziz spent 20 years in prison for a crime he did not commit and more than 55 years living with the hardship and indignity attendant to being unjustly branded as a convicted murderer of one of the most important civil rights leaders in history,xe2x80x9d the lawsuit filed Tuesday reads.

Halim testified during the trial that he shot Malcom X and that neither of the two other men had anything to do with it. He was released in 2010.

Malcolm X was killed on Feb. 21, 1965, while addressing his Organization of Afro-American Unity at the Audubon Ballroom in the Washington Heights neighborhood of New Yorkxe2x80x99s Manhattan borough.

New York County Supreme Court administrative judge Ellen Biben granted a motion to vacate Azizxe2x80x99s conviction in November. The judge also vacated Islamxe2x80x99s conviction.

xe2x80x9cI regret that this court cannot fully undo the serious miscarriages of justice in this case and give you back the many years that were lost,xe2x80x9d Biben said in the ruling.

The Manhattan District Attorneyxe2x80x99s Office and the Innocence Project jointly re-investigated Malcolm Xxe2x80x99s murder and uncovered FBI and NYPD documents that had been hidden from the prosecution and the defense.

The district attorneys office launched the investigation after a Netflix documentary xe2x80x9cWho Killed Malcolm X?xe2x80x9d raised questions about the murder.

xe2x80x9cThe FBI had eyewitness testimony from presumably the nine informants that were in the room that day about who did the crime,xe2x80x9d the documentaryxe2x80x99s producer Phil Bertelsen told CBS.

xe2x80x9cFull descriptions of the men, and particularly the man who wielded the shotgun. That was information that was not given to the NYPD,xe2x80x9d Bertelsen said.

No physical evidence has ever implicated Aziz or Islam in the murder. Each man also had an alibi that placed them away from the scene of the crime.

xe2x80x9cThe case against them rested solely on highly contradictory and implausible eyewitness testimony,xe2x80x9d according to the Innocence Project.

xe2x80x9cMy wrongful conviction was a terrible injustice that resulted from the deliberate and dishonest actions of corrupt officials,xe2x80x9d Aziz said after his sentence was vacated.

xe2x80x9cIt has caused unspeakable harm to my family and to me. The lost time and relationships with my family and loved ones can never be recovered.xe2x80x9d

Malcolm Xxe2x80x99s 56-year-old daughter Malikah Shabazz was found unconscious by her daughter in their Brooklyn home last month, days after the convictions against Islam and Aziz were vacated. Officials said her death appeared to be of natural causes.

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