THE only man ever to admit involvement in the assassination of American civil rights leader, Malcolm X, was freed on parole on Tuesday, 45 years after he helped gun down the activist.
Thomas Hagan was the last man still serving time in the 1965 killing, part of the skein of violence that wound through the cultural and political upheaval of the 1960s. He was freed from a Manhattan prison where he spent two days a week under a work-release programme.
Hagan, 69, has repeatedly expressed sorrow for being one of the gunmen who fired on Malcolm X, killing one of the civil rights era's most polarizing and compelling figures.
However, one of the groups dedicated to Malcolm X's memory condemned Hagan's parole.
Hagan declined to comment after his release..
"I really haven't had any time to gather my thoughts on anything," he told the Associated Press (AP) by telephone.
Hagan acknowledged that he was one of three men who shot Malcolm X in front of a crowd of hundreds - including several of his young children - as the civil rights leader began a speech at Harlem's Audubon Ballroom on February 21, 1965. Two other accomplices created a distraction in the audience, Hagan has said.
But he said the two men convicted with him were not involved. They, too, maintained their innocence and were paroled in the 1980s. No one else has ever been charged, a fact that has perpetuated debate and theories surrounding the slaying.
The Manhattan District Attorney's office, which prosecuted Hagan and his co-defendants, declined to comment on Hagan's release or his account of the killing.
Hagan applied 17 times before being granted parole last month. He had been sentenced to life in prison for what he described in a 2008 court filing as the deed of a young man who "acted out of rage on impulse and loyalty" to religious leaders.
The assassins gunned down Malcolm X out of anger at his split with the leadership of the Nation of Islam, the black Muslim movement for which he had once served as a prominent spokesman, said Hagan, then known as Talmadge X Hayer.
Malcolm X had spoken out against its leader, Elijah Muhammad, in comments that some of Muhammad's followers denounced as slander.
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