The administration of US President Donald Trump has released over 230,000 pages of classified archives on the assassination of Martin Luther King in 1968, despite concerns expressed by the civil rights leader's family about this declassification, world agencies reported.
On January 23, the US president issued an executive order declassifying government archives on the assassination of President John F. Kennedy in 1963, as well as the assassinations of his brother Robert Kennedy and Martin Luther King in 1968. In March, the National Archives published new classified documents on the assassination of President Kennedy, which shook the US and the world, giving rise to numerous theories and speculations. In April, the National Archives did the same with documents on the assassination of Robert Kennedy, father of the current Secretary of Health in the Trump administration, Robert Kennedy Jr.
The 230,000 pages now released include the FBI investigation, the international search for Martin Luther King's alleged assassin, and testimony from one of his accomplices, according to a statement by US Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard.
But in a statement, the children of the famous civil rights activist expressed concern about the possible misuse of the documents to "attack his legacy or the achievements of his movement."
During his lifetime, Martin Luther King was the subject of a "disinformation and surveillance campaign" organized by the then FBI director, the influential J. Edgar Hoover, aimed at "discrediting his reputation and, more generally, this of the civil rights movement“, the activist's children recalled. They also affirmed that they do not believe in the guilt of James Earl Ray, a white segregationist convicted of this murder, committed on April 4, 1968, in Memphis, where Martin Luther King had arrived to support striking garbage collectors. James Earl Ray died in prison in 1998.