Alarcon’s statements came on the heels of a US Supreme Court decision on Monday not to review the case of Gerardo Hernandez, Antonio Guerrero, Ramon Labañino, Fernando Gonzalez, and Rene Gonzalez – internationally known as the Cuban Five – who have been serving extremely long sentences (including life terms) in US high security prisons, since they were submitted to a biased trial in the US city of Miami in 2001.

These men, who were arrested by FBI agents in 1998, had been gathering information on counterrevolutionary and extremist Cuban-American groups that operate from South Florida with Washington’s complicity and have a history of terrorist attacks on Cuba.

“Today is a day of shame and anger,” Alarcon said. “Shame for those who believe in the justice of the US system, and anger for the thousands around the world who asked the US Supreme Court to review the case,” he added.

Alarcon explained that people in the United States do not have the right to appeal to the Supreme Court and that this body only accepts to review 1-2% of requests.

The Cuban top legislator recalled that the US Supreme Court had never before received a revision request supported by 10 Nobel Prize laureates, full Parliaments (Mexico and Panama), European and world parliamentarians, as well as by the main associations of jurists of the world and the United States and the former UN Human Rights Commission.

“The judges chose to do what the Obama administration requested them to do: refusing to review the case of the Five. That is why it is a day of shame and anger,” Alarcon stressed.

The President of the Cuban Parliament pointed out that “the best answer to this decision is to multiply our demands to the US Government and its President, Barack Obama, so that they do what they have to do and that is simply to release these five men who should have never been imprisoned.”

Alarcon insisted that this should be the decision of the US President “if we are to believe that there is any change and renovation in the rhetoric of the current White House incumbent.”