Black News - Freedom Archives

The following interview is the transcription of
a taped discussion with Bro . Muhammad Abd
AI-Aziz (formerly Norman 3X Butler), one of
the three men convicted of the assassination of
El-Hajj Malik EI-Shabazz on March 11, 1966.
After serving 14 years of a life sentence in prison,
Bro . Aziz is attempting to appeal his case and is
maintaining his innocence, a position that he
took during, the 1966 trial . The interview was
conducted on Thursday, February 8, 1979, at the
Ossining Correctional Facility (Sing-Sing) in
Ossining, New York where he is the Imam of the
World Community ofAI-Islam in the West .
In the coming months we, hope to havefollowup
interviews with the other two men convicted
of the killing (one of them who like Aziz
claims innocence, and the other, who has
admitted the guilt of himselfand others) .
Black News : Brother , we'd like to ask you some
questions about your case . You were convicted
of playing a part in the execution of El-Hajj
Malik El-Shabazz, Malcolm X, and presenly you
are waging a struggle against that conviction and
trying to prove your innocence and noninvolvement
in that crime . The first and most
obvious question is, were you in the Audobon
Ballroom on February 21, 1965? ,
Aziz : No I was not .
What were your feelings about Malik at that
time? You were a'member of the Nation of
Islam (NOI) ; he had left and was considered a
hypocrite . What were your emotional feelings
about him?
Well, I don't think I had any kind of negative
emotional feelings about him . I think my
attitude was more pne of an investigatory nature .
I wanted to know what was going on, and to that
extent I spoke with people who left the
organization with him, and I spoke to some that
had remained . I didn't actually have a negative
or positive position or anything like that . It was
just a matter of wanting to know what was going
on .
Why do you think Malcolm was killed?
I think there are a lot of things that could be said
about why he actually was killed . We may never
know, because who's going to tell us? I think
that various people had reason to want him
killed . The government probably had reasons to
want him killed, maybe people in the NOI had
reasons to want him killed, and maybe people in
the underworld had reasons to want him killed .
There was some mention that he had received
threats not only from the NOI and the obvious
threat from the government, but that the whole
drug element within the Harlem community was
against him because near the end of his life he
began an active campaign against drugs .
Well that's the aspect I had referred to when I
said that more than one party or more than one
body of people may have wanted something to
happen to him .
Do you know if any members of the
Organization of Afro-American Unity (OAAU)
or the Muslim Mosque Incorporated (MMI),
which were the organizations that Malcolm was
the head of, were involved in any way in the
assassination?
I can't say definitively because obviously I
wasn't there and I didn't know all of the people
involved, but it is an accurate statement to say
that some of the members of his organization
were undercover _ either city, state, or . federal
police .
Thomas Hayer during the trial stated that there
were no members of the Nation of Islam
involved in the execution . Is that the case? Was
Hayer a member of the NOI?
Well he was, but not actively . He was inactive at
the time . Something had happened, I don't
know what that was, but he wasn't in good
standing .
Had he been in for a long time?
That I really don't know .
It's been stated that when the program opened
up that afternoon, that a Brother Benjamin came