By Ann W. O'Neill and Vanessa Bauzá
Staff Writers

Known as the Cuban 5, the convicted spy ring members are heroes at home and have gained an international following in human rights and left-leaning circles. "Free the Five!" say the Web sites, petitions and full-page newspaper ads.

On Wednesday, the spies finally had the collective ear of the three people who can give them their freedom -- a panel of appeals court judges in Miami.

Gerardo Hernández Nordela, 38, Ramón Labañino Salazar, 40, Antonio Guerrero Rodríguez, 45, Fernando González Llort, 40, and René González Sehwerert, 47, were convicted in June 2001 following a seven-month federal espionage trial. They are serving terms from 15 years to life in federal prisons across the country.

As members of what then was known as the Wasp Network, they were convicted of failing to register as foreign agents and conspiring to spy on U.S. military installations and the Cuban exile community in South Florida.

Hernández, the leader, also was convicted of murder-conspiracy in connection with a 1996 Cuban missile shoot-down of two Brothers to the Rescue planes that killed four U.S. civilian fliers in international airspace off the island.

Their supporters have long claimed the five are political prisoners who were railroaded. In Cuba, they are hailed as anti-terrorists and the Castro government has organized massive rallies on their behalf. Even the smallest and most remote Cuban village has an humble monument commemorating the "five heroes."

Cuba is waiting for justice, said Miguel Alvarez, adviser to the president of Cuba's National Assembly, Ricardo Alarcon. The trial was unfair, he added, because "It was a very politicized hearing meant to please those sectors in Miami that carry out a radical policy against Cuba."

Labañino's wife, Elizabeth Palmeiro, is waiting hopefully in Cuba. "I'm firmly convinced that when the American people know what happened to our husbands and compañeros they will support this call for justice," she said.

Lawyers arguing on Wednesday before the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals panel included Chicago 7 trial veteran Leonard Weinglass. He claimed anti-Castro sentiment is so virulent and engrained in Miami it was impossible to empanel an objective jury. The convictions should be tossed out, he added, because the trial could easily have been moved 30 miles to the north, to Fort Lauderdale, where attitudes about Cuba and Castro are less inflamed.

"Here," in Miami, "you have a community made of up half a million people who have lost their homes, their businesses and their livelihood to the government that sent the five [to the United States]," Weinglass told the judges.

Even though the jury included no Cuban-Americans, "half a dozen jurors, all non-Cuban, said they were afraid to sit on this jury," Weinglass added. "Why? They were not afraid of the defendants. They were afraid of their neighbors. They were afraid of their co-workers. They were afraid of the community."

In the years before the trial, passions in Miami were inflamed by two incidents: The Cuban government's shoot-down of the two Brothers to the Rescue planes and the international custody battle over Elián González.

Attorneys noted that less than a year before the trial, 100,000 people in Miami protested the U.S. government's decision to return Elián to his father in Cuba.

Judge Stanley Birch, leading the panel, honed in on another Weinglass argument: A year after the Cuban spy trial, lawyers in the same U.S. Attorney's office cited prejudice on Cuban issues as grounds to move a civil trial over the government's raid to seize Elián.

The judges also grilled Assistant U.S. Attorney Caroline Miller on what evidence linked Hernández to a murder conspiracy. She pointed to coded messages from Havana to Hernández to make sure agents didn't fly with Brothers to the Rescue in the time when the planes were downed.

Assistant Federal Public Defender Richard Klugh argued it would take "an extraordinary leap" for Hernández to know Havana's intentions. Klugh also argued the life sentences for Hernández, Guerrero and Labañino were based on espionage that revealed information already in the public record. Its impact, he said, was "nothing more than a flea on a pimple of the United States."

For Weinglass, the issue was location, location, location. "Miami is not the villain of this piece," he told reporters assembled at a news conference after the hearing. On a table in front of him were stacks of petitions, with a total of 50,000 signatures. Behind him was a banner with the pictures of the five convicted spies.

"Miami is Miami. It is a city with its own history, a long and difficult history. The trial should not have been in this city. The U.S. government knew that. It selected this city to exploit its ongoing difficulties."

The court's decision isn't expected for months.