Cuban exiles said Monday they were relieved the Supreme Court refused to review the convictions of five intelligence agents for the communist country, despite calls from Nobel Prize winners and international legal groups to consider the case.

The convictions stand against the so-called "Cuban Five," who maintain they did not receive a fair trial because of strong anti-Castro sentiment in Miami. The men have been lionized as heroes in Cuba. Exile groups say they were justly punished.

The five -- Ramón Labañino, Antonio Guerrero, Fernando González, Rene Gonzalez and Gerardo Hernandez -- were convicted in 2001 of being unregistered foreign agents. Three also were found guilty of conspiracy to obtain military secrets from the U.S. Southern Command headquarters.

Hernandez was convicted of murder conspiracy in the deaths of four pilots, members of the Miami-based Brothers to the Rescue organization, who were shot down by Cuban fighter jets in 1996 off the island's coast. The group sought to identify and help migrants leaving Cuba by sea. The Cuban government maintains the planes violated its airspace to scatter political pamphlets over the island.

Richard Klugh, a Miami-based attorney for the five, said he was disappointed. He and other attorneys were reviewing their options.

Brothers to the Rescue President Jose Basulto, the sole survivor of the shooting, said the Supreme Court did the right thing.

"Those four young men didn't deserve to die like that," said Basulto, a veteran of the failed 1961 Bay of Pigs invasion. "Fine, I'm a sworn enemy of Cuba, but those men weren't."

Basulto said the Cuban government relies on spies like the Cuban Five -- and most recently retired State Department officer Walter Kendall Myers and his wife -- for information it can use or trade. The Myerses were arrested June 4 in Washington on charges they spied for Havana for three decades.

"This is a business they have," Basulto said. "If you're a spy, you're a spy. You've got to pay the consequencnes."

In 2005, a three-judge panel of the federal appeals court in Atlanta initially reversed the convictions, agreeing the trial should have been moved from Miami because the defendants couldn't get a fair trial there.

The full 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals reinstated the convictions. But new sentences were ordered for Guerro and Medina, both of whom are serving life sentences, as well as Fernando Gonzalez. A judge is expected to re-sentence them in the coming months.

Hernandez is serving a life term, while Rene Gonzalez has about two years left on a 15-year sentence.

Hernandez said in a statement released through the Cuban government Monday that he was not surprised by the decision.

"Now I have no doubt that our case has been, from the beginning, a political case, not only because we have all the legal arguments for the Court to review it, but also because we have growing international support," he said.

U.S. Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, R-Miami, also said she was pleased with Monday's ruling.

"Let this be a lesson to those who continue to spy for the Cuban regime, and other state sponsors of terrorism -- justice will be done," she said in a statement.

Defense lawyers maintain the men were trying to gather information to prevent exile groups from waging more attacks such as the bombings at Havana hotels that killed an Italian tourist in 1997. In Cuba, their photos appear in billboards and on posters in hotels.

Ten Nobel Prize winners, including Guatemalan human rights activist Rigoberta Menchu and German author Gunter Grass, as well as lawyers and advocates from more than a dozen countries, had urged the high court to intervene.

Ricardo Alarcon, head of Cuba's largely ceremonial parliament, rejected the high court's decision, saying in a statement that its "judges did what the Obama administration asked them."

The ruling "shows one more time the arbitrariness of a corrupt and hypocritical court system and its cruel brutality toward our Five Heroes," the statement said.

Even in Miami, not everyone was pleased.

Andres Gomez, head of a coalition of Cuban-American groups that favor normalizing relations with the island, said the U.S. must repudiate past efforts to overthrow the country's communist government to renew dialogue with Cuba. Releasing the Cuban Five would help, he said, noting President Barack Obama has the power to pardon them.

However, such a step looks unlikely. The Obama administration has contended the convictions were fairly won.

Associated Press writer Will Weissert contributed to this report from Havana.