A Miami federal judge has awarded $73 million to the family of an opponent of Venezuela’s ruling socialists who died while in custody in what the judge called a “murder for hire.” Judge Darrin P. Gayles said that a “criminal enterprise” led by Venezuelan president Nicolás Maduro was to blame for the untimely death of Fernando Albán four years ago. Albán—a former Caracas councilman—was arrested in the Venezulan capital when he landed at the airport on a flight from New York in 2018. He’d been in the U.S. as part of a delegation which criticized Maduro’s government from the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly. He died three days after being arrested in what authorities initially considered a suicide fall from the 10th floor of a building owned by Venezuela’s intelligence services. “Mr. Albán’s murder was a murder for hire because members of the Maduro Criminal Enterprise who committed the murder received payment (in the form of salaries) from the Maduro regime,” the Miami court said in a ruling last week.
