(AllHipHop News) Back in February, reports surfaced that Malcolm X’s grandson and Muslim activist leader, Malcolm Shabazz was arrested by FBI agents.
Over a month and a half later, Shabazz releases a statement addressing the arrest and clearing up any misconceptions.
[ALSO READ: Malcolm X’s Grandson Arrested]
According to the official statement, Shabazz states that he had known since the beginning of 2012 that he was “under investigation by the F.B.I.’s Counter Terrorism Task Force Unit located in Goshen, N.Y.”
While early reports claim he was arrested by FBI agents in an undisclosed location, Shabazz asserts that he was arrested by police from the City of Middletown, N.Y. Police Department.
According to Shabazz, the story goes that he was arrested by Middeltown police officers a few days following him requesting a visa to travel to Iran for The Hollywoodism International Conference.
Out of shock, Shabazz gave officers a fake name and was subsequently charged with grand larceny and false impersonation.
The grand larceny charge was dismissed and he bailed out in two week after not accepting a 90-day jail sentence for the False Impersonation charge.
This arrest was apparently the culmination of months of “a pattern of harassment from law enforcement which is usually reserved for important figures,” according to Shabazz in the statement.
That pattern included, but was not limited to being stopped arrested for disorderly conduct, an arrest for jay walking and inordinate bail amounts.
At one point in late October of 2012, after entering a car with his mother and friends, two police cars converged on their cars and drew guns on the vehicle. Shabazz was being stopped due to warrants out for his arrest, however the statement alleges that an officer by the name of “R. Ribeiro” stated this was Shabazz’s “lucky day” as he actually did not have warrants out for his arrest.
Shabazz was also highly critical of the Lifetime Network’s movie Betty & Coretta which detailed the relationship of the widows of Martin Luther King and Shabazz’s grandfather, Malcolm X:
“This film aside from being poorly acted, and shallow in depth also threatened to inflame old controversies, and open unhealed wounds and to remind the public of sad outcomes without ever identifying B.O.S.S.I., the C.I.A., F.B.I. and other forces that set the climate for my grandfather’s assassination, and made my family a long-suffering casualty of COINTELPRO, and other anti-Black repression programs.”