NEW YORK, United States (AFP) — The two men whose convictions for the 1965 assassination of Malcolm X were overturned last year will receive $36 million from the city and state of New York, their lawyer confirmed Sunday night.

"Today we acknowledge that injustice and take a modest step toward rectifying it," David Shanies, the lawyer of Muhammad Aziz and Khalil Islam, said in an emailed statement to AFP.

Shanies confirmed a report from the New York Times that the city of New York will pay $26 million to be split between 84-year-old Aziz and the family of Islam, who died in 2009.

The state government of New York will also pay five million dollars each, for a total of $36 million in compensation.

Islam, both spent over 20 years in prison for Malcolm X's murder, which they always maintained they did not commit.

They were released in the mid-1980s, but it was not until November 2021 that their names were fully cleared by the New York State Supreme Court, which called their convictions almost a half-century ago "a failure of justice."