Connection between Malcom X, Pio Gama Pinto deaths

Police examine the car which Pio Gama Pinto was driving when he was murdered in 1965. [File, Standard]

How can an assassin's bullet fired in New York, the headquarters of the free world, hit its target and then ricochet to Nairobi, 36 hours later and silence a Kenyan veteran freedom fighter?

There are a set of bizarre coincidences pointing to a possibility of a link to the twin killing of one of America's fiercest civil rights activists Malcolm X and one of Kenya's polished politicians, Pio Gama Pinto.

When the first shot was fired on February 21, 1965, his pregnant wife and daughter watched in horror as the 39-year-old Muslim preacher went down as he had started speaking at the Organisation of Afro-American Unity at the Audubon Ballroom.