Italy – Vanity Fair, Oct. 06, 2025
Armanda Colusso: “I asked for the phone call with the Prime Minister this time, because the days of silence were leaving me anguished.”
For eleven months, Alberto Trentini, an aid worker originally from Lido di Venezia, has been locked up in El Rodeo I, a maximum-security Venezuelan prison notorious for the harsh conditions imposed on political opponents and alleged “subversives.” His mother, Armanda Colusso, recently spoke with Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni to ask what had been done to bring her son home.
“I was the one who requested the phone call this time, because the silence over those days was leaving me deeply distressed,” she explained last night on the show Che Tempo Che Fa.
“She was available to speak, we talked, and she promised her commitment — to help and to take the lead in securing Alberto’s release. I was satisfied because she made this promise to Italy and to the world.”
However, Armanda Colusso also denounced the lack of information during the early months of her son’s detention:
“We were extremely worried. We had no news, but we were still hoping. Then there was no contact at all,” she said.
“As a family, we still don’t know what our government did or how it acted during those first months.”
