Alarcon, also a member of the Politburo of the Cuban Communist Party, made these statements to the newspaper The Havana Reporter, published by the Prensa Latina news agency.
 

Gerardo Hernandez, Rene Gonzalez, Ramon Labañino, Fernando Gonzalez and Antonio Guerrero, known internationally as The Five, were condemned to long sentences in a process described as biased by legal experts.
 

The only crime of these young men was monitoring the criminal actions of
counterrevolutionary terrorist groups based in south Florida, in US territory.
 

In the interview, Alarcon assessed as an additional and completely nonsensical punishment the denial by a US judge of a request made by Rene Gonzalez so he could return to his country after his release on October 7, based on the fact that the sentence includes three additional years of supervised release.
 

The Parliament President pointed out that to force him to stay in south Florida is to subject him to evident risks and dangers.
 

Alarcon recalled that President Barack Obama has legal possibilities to solve this
injustice by immediately freeing the five prisoners, unconditionally and without excluding anyone.