After 423 days, Alberto Trentini has finally been released. The Italian aid worker had been held on unfounded charges of "conspiracy" in Venezuela since 15 November 2024, a few weeks after his arrival in the country as an aid worker and mission leader for the organisation Humanity & Inclusion, with the aim of providing assistance to people with disabilities in the most remote areas. He had been accused of conspiracy and terrorism, but no formal charges were ever filed and his detention conditions were extremely harsh. Throughout these 14 months of silence, some voices never fell quiet — among them that of Alberto Trentini's mother, Armanda Colusso, who never stopped calling for his release and demanding clarity. After months of silence, Trentini will now come home.

Released alongside him was Mario Burlò, also held in Venezuela, as part of a broader operation to free several international political prisoners carried out by interim president Delcy Rodriguez as a "gesture of openness" towards the West following the ousting and arrest of Maduro by the United States. The two Italian nationals are now safely housed at the Italian Embassy in Caracas, where they were received by Ambassador Giovanni Umberto De Vito.

In the preceding days, two other Italians had already been released alongside prisoners of other nationalities. The first was Luigi Gasperin, a 77-year-old businessman arrested on 7 August 2025 and taken to a detention centre in the Prados del Este area of Caracas, on charges of alleged possession, transport and use of explosive materials; he suffers from a serious heart condition. The second was Biagio Pilieri, 60 years old and holding dual citizenship: Pilieri is a journalist and politician well known in Venezuela for his battles against the regime's censorship, and had been held in the Helicoide, one of Venezuela's harshest prisons, on charges of terrorism and treason. "We weren't expecting to be released, we hadn't heard anything" — Trentini's first words, as reported by several newspapers — "we weren't tortured, they treated us well." Twenty-four Italo-Venezuelan nationals detained for political reasons remain in Venezuelan prisons, along with a handful of others held on common criminal charges.