Cuba on Wednesday freed the last two of a group of 75 opposition activists detained in 2003, with the pair vowing to continue pressing for greater freedoms on the communist-ruled island.

Dissidents said the government released Felix Navarro, 57, a teacher and political activist, and Jose Ferrer, a 40-year-old fisherman and opposition movement member.

They were the last remaining imprisoned dissidents from the group detained by the Havana government eight years ago.

"I am in perfectly good spirits and health," Navarro told AFP from Perico, a city in Matanzas province 140 kilometers (87 miles) east of Havana.

"I was jailed for demanding that the government allow Cubans to express themselves freely and that Cuba be prosperous and free, and that is something we will continue to do," he added.

Sayli Navarro said her father had made his way home Wednesday morning and was "very upbeat, very happy, -- and prepared to pick up where he left off in 2003."

Ferrer celebrated his release with family at their home in Palmarito, in southeastern Cuba, where he said he will resume "the fight."

The two were among the scores of activists swept up and incarcerated in March 2003, raising an international outcry and provoking the European Union to cancel official visits to Cuba and suspend cooperation programs.

The regime of President Raul Castro considers the opposition "mercenaries" paid by Washington to foment unrest and threaten national security.

Rights groups say the activists were detained while protesting, and that they were doing little more than exercising their right to freedom of expression.

Most of the dissidents were charged with crimes including "acts against the independence of the state" because they allegedly received funds or other support from US-financed non-governmental organizations.

They were sentenced to between six and 28 years in prison after speedy and unfair trials for engaging in activities the authorities perceived as subversive and damaging to Cuba.

Between 2003 and 2010, 23 were freed, mainly for health reasons, while Cuba's Catholic church reached a deal to free the remaining 52 in May 2010.

From July 7 last year, 40 of the 52 were freed to go into exile in Spain, and 10 others later left prison to remain in Cuba.

It was an emotional day for economist Oscar Espinosa, one of the original 75 who was freed in 2004, who said the release marked "an important step for continuing the fight for the future that we want for all Cubans, without exception."

Elizardo Sanchez, one of the country's most prominent dissidents, said the releases do not mean Cuba's prisons are empty of dissidents, noting that there are some 60 people currently held on political charges.

He said it was time to end what dissidents have described as a "repressive trend" of arrests, and urged a redrafting of the criminal code so that regime opponents do not automatically go to jail.

"The government is releasing prisoners with one hand and imprisoning them with the other," because it "criminalizes" the struggle for civil and political rights, said Sanchez, who heads the outlawed but tolerated Cuban Commission for Human Rights and National Reconciliation.

Berta Soler, leader of the Ladies in White, said members of the group comprised of wives of political prisoners were "very excited," but that they would nonetheless go ahead with a planned march on Sunday west of Havana, to press for the release of other prisoners.

"It's been a slow process, but they have all left" jail, Soler said of the group of 75, noting that "the government was not ready for 12 of them to stay and press for democracy" in Cuba.

Meanwhile, Amnesty International welcomed the release as "a step in the right direction" but stressed that the dissidents should have never been imprisoned in the first place.

"What we want to see now is for the Cuban authorities not to force activists into exile as a condition for their release, and to ensure all human rights activists are able to carry out their legitimate work without fear of threats, harassment, further arrests or unfair trials in their own country," Amnesty's Cuba expert Gerardo Ducos said.