A man who spent 20 years in prison after being wrongfully convicted of Malcolm X’s murder filed a $40 million federal lawsuit against the Big Apple on Thursday — alleging wanton corruption in the police department and city government led to his unjust conviction in the 1960s. 

Muhammad Aziz, 84, was exoneratedof the civil rights leader’s 1965 killing last year after his lawyers and the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office determined the FBI and the NYPD had withheld critical evidence that would have likely led to his acquittal at trial. 

Aziz’s conviction — and that of his co-defendant, Khalil Islam — were the product of “flagrant official misconduct” by the NYPD and the department’s notorious McCarthy-era intelligence squad, known as “BOSSI,” the suit alleges.

“As 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,” his attorney, David Shanies, wrote in the filing.

In a statement, Mayor Eric Adams said the city is reviewing the lawsuit.

“As someone who has fought for a fairer criminal justice system for my entire career, I believe the overturning of Mr. Aziz and Mr. Islam’s convictions was the just outcome. We are reviewing the lawsuit,” Adams said. 

In November 2021, then-Manhattan District Attorney Cy Vance apologized to Aziz and Islam, who died in 2009, for the prosecutorial malpractice that led to their unjust convictions. 

“What we have obtained now in this reinvestigation, are numerous materials that my office tragically did not have in 1965 and thus did not turn over to the defense,” Vance said. “Without these files, it is clear these men did not receive a fair trial, and their convictions must be vacated.”

Vance’s office agreed to reinvestigate the convictions after the Netflix documentary series “Who Killed Malcolm X?” raised serious flaws in the case — and pointed to a Nation of Islam lieutenant named William Bradley as the true killer. 

Bradley, of Newark, New Jersey, allegedly fired a sawed-off shotgun at Malcolm X in the Audubon Ballroom in 1965, killing him. Bradley died in 2018.

In addition to the city, Aziz’s suit names some two dozen former police officers as defendants, alleging they unlawfully helped secure his wrongful conviction. 

Aziz is seeking a jury trial and at least $40 million in damages in the suit, filed in the Eastern District of New York. 

One of his attorneys, Deborah I. Francois of the Shanies Law Office, said the lawsuit aimed to hold city officials accountable — and called on Adams to provide her client with “swift justice.”

“Muhammad Aziz and Khalil Islam were able to get a small measure of justice when their convictions were vacated last November after 55 years. We’re now seeking to hold accountable the government officials whose egregious misconduct led to their wrongful convictions,” Francois said in a statement. “The Mayor is in a unique position to do what his predecessors have not done in this case, which is to provide swift justice.”