Five Cuban spies imprisoned in the U.S. for being unregistered foreign agents are vilified in Miami as dangerous conspirators. But here they're considered "Heroic Prisoners of the Empire" who only sought to protect Cuba from anti-communist terrorists. During Cuba's annual May 1 workers parade, hundreds of thousands of people will focus on their plight.

And Fidel Castro is closely watching their federal appeals.

Castro's government sent Gerardo Hernandez, Ramon Labanino, Rene Gonzalez, Antonio Guerrero and Fernando Gonzalez to South Florida to gather information about anti-communist exile groups and send it back to the island using encrypted software, high-frequency radio transmissions and coded electronic phone messages.

While the so-called "Wasp Network" spy ring obtained no U.S. secrets, federal prosecutors argued for stiff sentences.

Defense lawyers said they were merely trying to gather information that might prevent exile groups from waging attacks such as the bombings at Havana hotels that killed an Italian tourist in 1997.

All five were convicted in 2001 of being unregistered foreign agents, and three also were found guilty of espionage conspiracy for failed efforts to obtain military secrets from the U.S. Southern Command headquarters. Hernandez also was convicted of murder conspiracy in the deaths of four Miami-based pilots whose small, private planes were shot down on Feb. 24, 1996, by a Cuban MiG in international waters off Cuba's northern coast.

Now serving terms ranging from 10 years to life, the men continue to appeal a decision last year by the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Atlanta. That decision reinstated their convictions, which a three-judge panel of the appellate court had thrown out because anti-Castro feeling in Miami at the time did not allow them a fair trial.

While the men say it was impossible to be tried fairly in the months after a politically charged custody battle over young Cuban castaway Elian Gonzalez, the full appellate court disagreed. Now their attorneys are appealing on other procedural issues.

Elian was 5 he was when found clinging to an inner tube off Florida's coast in November 1999. His mother had died when their boat carrying would-be migrants capsized. After a court battle waged by his anti-Castro relatives in Miami, the Clinton administration handed Elian over to his father in 2000 and they returned to Cuba, where they too are celebrated as heroes.

"They are grasping at straws," said Camila Ruiz, spokeswoman for the Cuban-American National Foundation, a historically militant anti-Castro group that was one of the spy ring's targets. "There was not a single Cuban-American on the jury. Cuban-Americans make up a big part of the community in Miami, but they aren't the whole community."

Both the exiles in Florida and Cubans on the island believe Americans would take their side if they learned more about the case, especially after the Sept. 11 attacks brought home the horrors of terrorism. And as with the Elian affair, the agents' case has become a proxy battle for American public opinion toward Cuba.

Communist officials garnered considerable sympathy in the United States with their successful battle to reunite the motherless boy with his father. And after Sept. 11, they hoped Americans would see the agents as anti-terrorist patriots, working peacefully to protect their island nation.

While the men were convicted in June 2001, before Sept. 11, they were sentenced the December after the terrorist attacks.

National Assembly President Ricardo Alarcon, who said he and his government feel a strong responsibility for the men, expressed frustration that the case hasn't made bigger news inside the United States.

"After 9/11 there is much more awareness of terrorism and terrorists in the United States," the parliament speaker told The Associated Press last month. "In that context, I would hope they would understand."

But Ruiz says the five men are anything but heroes _ and that it's precisely because of Sept. 11 that Americans should condemn their actions.

"This is an issue for all Americans and our common concerns about foreign threats to our country," said Ruiz, who rejects the terrorist label for her organization, which she says supports nonviolent change in Cuba.

On the island, the case is considered so important that the 80-year-old Castro has carefully followed it while recovering from intestinal surgery, Alarcon said. Castro temporarily ceded power to his brother Raul in late July after announcing his illness.

"I can assure you, that he is very well aware of the case of the Cuban Five," said Alarcon.

Along with the appellate case, the agents' lawyers also have been consumed with battles over visitation rights. The United States has repeatedly declined to grant visas to the wives of Gerardo Hernandez and Rene Gonzalez to visit their husbands behind bars.

"We have been trying to visit them all this time," said Hernandez's wife, Adriana Perez, who hopes to visit her husband at the federal penitentiary in Victorville, California.

Perez said U.S. authorities have expressed concerns that she would try to overstay her visa, or would present "a danger to the United States." The U.S. State Department doesn't comment publicly on such decisions, citing confidentiality concerns.

Rene Gonzalez's two daughters, 8-year-old Ivette and 22-year-old Irma, were allowed to travel together and visit their father at the federal penitentiary in Mariana, Florida, in December and January. But their mother, Olga Salanueva, who was deported after her husband was arrested, has been denied seven requests for a U.S. visa.

"She thinks it's great to see her dad on the billboards, but she'd rather see her dad at home," Salanueva said. "That's the logical place for her dad to be."