MALCOLM X KILLER FREED AFTER 44 YEARS

By CNN

Posted Wednesday, April 28 2010 at 17:22

NEW YORK, Wednesday

Thomas Hagan, the only man who admitted his role in the 1965 assassination of iconic black leader Malcolm X, was paroled Tuesday.

Hagan was freed a day earlier than planned because his paperwork was processed more quickly than anticipated, according to the New York State Department of Correctional Services.

Hagan, 69, walked out of the minimum-security Lincoln Correctional Facility at 11 a.m. The facility is located at the intersection of West 110th Street and Malcolm X Boulevard.

Hagan had been in a full-time work-release programme since March 1992 that allowed him to live at home with his family in Brooklyn five days a week and report to the prison just two days.

Last month, Hagan pleaded his case for freedom. He had been before that body 14 other times since 1984. Each time, he was rejected. Hagan was no ordinary prisoner.

He is the only man to have confessed in the killing of Malcolm X, who was gunned down while giving a speech in New York’s Audubon Ballroom in 1965.

“I have deep regrets about my participation in that,” he told the parole board on March 3, according to a transcript.

Hagan had been sentenced to 20 years to life imprisonment after being found guilty at trial with two others in 1966. The other two men were released in the 1980s and have long denied involvement in the killing.

Declined comment

CNN was unable to reach Hagan for a comment about his release. The Nation of Islam declined comment for this story.

Malcolm X is best known as the fiery leader of the Nation of Islam who denounced whites as “blue-eyed devils.”

But at the end of his life, he changed his views toward whites and discarded the Nation of Islam’s ideology in favour of orthodox Islam. In doing so, he feared for his own life from within the Nation.