The New York-based human rights watchdog highlighted the cases of Rafael Matos Montes de Oca, Emilio Planas Robert and brothers Alexeis, Diango and Vianco Vargas Martin. It said they have been held for months in eastern provincial lockups.

“These five cases are only the tip of the iceberg for Cuba’s repression of free speech,” Amnesty special adviser Javier Zuniga said in a statement.

Cuban officials, who did not respond to a request for comment Sunday, deny holding any political prisoners. The government and its supporters call dissidents “counterrevolutionaries” and “mercenaries” who take foreign money to try to undermine the island’s Communist system.

Cuba has cleared its jails of internationally recognized prisoners of conscience in recent years. In April 2011, the last of 75 dissidents and activists sentenced to long prison terms after a 2003 crackdown walked free under a deal brokered by the Roman Catholic Church. Many went into exile with their families.

At the time, Amnesty said it no longer recognized any prisoners of conscience in Cuba. On several occasions since then it designated islanders as political prisoners and they were released days, weeks or months later.

Most recently, Amnesty said, independent journalist Calixto Martinez was named a prisoner of conscience in January and freed in April after nearly seven months without formal charge.

The five named Sunday are the only ones Amnesty currently recognizes as prisoners of conscience in Cuba.

Amnesty said Matos Montes de Oca and Planas Robert were convicted of “dangerousness” or “special proclivity to commit crimes,” a statute that can be broadly interpreted.

It said they were arrested in late September after anti-government posters were put up in the eastern city of Guantanamo. Both belong to a dissident group called the Patriotic Union of Cuba.

The Vargas Martin brothers are the sons of a member of the Ladies in White opposition group. Alexeis was arrested Nov. 27 in Santiago as he tried to return to his home, which had been surrounded by pro-government counter-protesters, Amnesty said.

The group said his 17-year-old twin brothers were arrested Dec. 2 as they protested his detention outside a police station. Police have accused the three of using violence or intimidation against authorities, but no formal charges have been filed.

Zuniga gave Cuba credit for scrapping a long-standing exit visa requirement earlier this year that had made it difficult for islanders to travel abroad and was frequently denied to dissidents, but he said repression of free speech remains.

“Much more needs to be done to guarantee civil and political liberties in the country,” he said.

A spokesman for the nongovernmental Cuban Commission for Human Rights and National Reconciliation, which tracks arrests of dissidents, said it was monitoring the five men and considers their punishments out of line with the alleged violations.

“We have them on our list,” Juan Goberna said. “We are asking for their freedom and we have been following their cases.”

Activists say that rather than hold government opponents for long terms, authorities have increasingly adopted the tactic of arresting dissidents briefly to harass them and prevent them from carrying out protests.

Hundreds of catch-and-release detentions occur each month, Goberna’s group says.

HAVANA: It’s been more than 54 years since someone not named “Castro” led Cuba, and it will likely be five more.

But now islanders and exiles alike have finally been given a date for when the sun will set on brothers Fidel and Raul’s longtime rule: 2018.

In accepting a new presidential term on Sunday, the 81-year-oldRaul Castro announced that it would be his last. And for the first time, he tapped a rising young star, Miguel Diaz-Canel, to be his top lieutenant and possible successor.

“This will be my last term,” Castro said, his voice firm.

Castro also said he hopes to establish two-term limits and age caps for political offices including the presidency, though he didn’t specify what age.

As the new first vice president of the ruling Council of State, the 52-year-old Diaz-Canel is now a heartbeat from the presidency and has risen higher than any other Cuban official who didn’t directly participate in the heady days of the 1959 revolution.

In his 35-minute speech, Castro hinted at other changes to the constitution, some so dramatic that they will have to be ratified by the Cuban people in a referendum. Still, he scotched any idea that the country would soon abandon socialism, saying he had not assumed the presidency in order to destroy Cuba’s system.

“I was not chosen to be president to restore capitalism to Cuba,” he said. “I was elected to defend, maintain and continue to perfect socialism, not destroy it.”

Castro fueled interest in Sunday’s legislative gathering after mentioning on Friday his possible retirement and suggesting lightheartedly that he had plans to resign at some point.

It’s now clear that he was serious when he promised that Sunday’s speech would have fireworks, and would touch on his future in leadership.

Cuba is at a moment of “historic transcendence,” Castro told lawmakers in speaking of his decision to name Diaz-Canel to the No. 2 job, replacing the 81-year-old Jose Ramon Machado Ventura, who fought with the Castros in the Sierra Maestra.

Castro praised Machado Ventura and another aging revolutionary for offering to leave their positions so that younger leaders could move up.

Their selflessness is “a concrete demonstration of their genuine revolutionary fiber … That is the essence of the founding generation of this revolution.”

Castro said that Diaz-Canel’s promotion “represents a definitive step in the configuration of the future leadership of the nation through the gradual and orderly transfer of key roles to new generations.”

“Our greatest satisfaction is the tranquility and serene confidence we feel as we deliver to the new generations the responsibility to continue building socialism,” he added.

On the streets of Havana, where people often express a jaded skepticism of all things political, there was genuine excitement.

“This is the start of a new era,” said Roberto Delgado, a 68-year-old retiree walking down a street in the leafy Miramar neighborhood. “It will undoubtedly be a complicated and difficult process, but something important happened today.”

“I’m mesmerized,” added Regla Blanco, 48. “You thought that with all these old men, it would never end. I am very satisfied with what Raul said. He is keeping his promise.”

Since taking over from Fidel in 2006, Castro has instituted a slate of important economic and social changes, expanding private enterprise, legalizing a real estate market and relaxing hated travel restrictions.

Still, the country remains ruled by the Communist Party and any opposition to it lacks legal recognition.

Indeed, several dozen anti-government protesters were detained across the island Sunday and held for a few hours for public disorder before being released, according to Elizardo Sanchez, a dissident who monitors human rights in Cuba.

Castro has mentioned term limits before, but he has never said specifically when he would step down, and the concept has yet to be codified into Cuban law.

If he keeps his word, Castro will leave office no later than 2018. Cuban-American exiles in the United States have waited decades for the end of the Castro era, although they will likely be dismayed if it ends on the brothers’ terms.

Nevertheless, the promise of a change at the top could have deep significance for U.S.-Cuba ties. The wording of Washington’s 51-year economic embargo on the island specifies that it cannot be lifted while a Castro is in charge.

In Florida, home to hundreds of thousands of Cuban exiles, some were skeptical that Castro’s eventual retirement will change much.

“First we have to see if he lives another five years, and after we have to see what happens,” said Raul Lopez Mola, an 81-year-old who abandoned Cuba in 1966 for a new life in Miami. “No one can predict what will happen in five years. For me, I don’t think it has great importance.”

“It would be more meaningful if Fidel Castro died,” Lopez Mola added.

Fidel Castro is 86 and retired, and has appeared increasingly frail in recent months. He made a surprise appearance at Sunday’s gathering, receiving a thunderous ovation from lawmakers.

Some analysts have speculated that the Castros would push a younger member of their family into a top job, but there was no hint of that Sunday.

While few things are ever clear in Cuba’s hermetically sealed news environment, rumblings that Diaz-Canel, an electrical engineer by training and ex-minister of higher education, might be in line for a senior post have grown.

In recent weeks, he has frequently been featured on state television news broadcasts in an apparent attempt to raise his profile.

He also traveled to Venezuela in January for the symbolic inauguration of Hugo Chavez, a key Cuban ally who had been re-elected president but was too ill to be sworn in.

The 612 lawmakers sworn in Sunday also named Esteban Lazo as the National Assembly’s first new chief in 20 years, replacing Ricardo Alarcon.

Lazo, who turns 69 on Tuesday, is a vice president and member of the Communist Party’s ruling political bureau. Parliament meets only twice a year and generally passes legislation unanimously without visible debate.

The legislature also named as vice presidents of the ruling Council Machado Ventura; comptroller general Gladys Bejerano; second Vice President Ramiro Valdes; Havana Communist Party secretary Lazara Mercedes Lopez Acea; and Salvador Valdes Mesa, head of Cuba’s labor union.

HAVANA:  Cuban President Raul Castro has unexpectedly raised the possibility of leaving his post, saying Friday that he is old and has a right to retire. But he did not say when he might do so or if such a move was imminent.

The Cuban leader is scheduled to be named by parliament to a new five-year term Sunday, and Castro urged reporters to listen to his speech that day.

“I am going to resign,” Castro said at a joint appearance with visiting Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev, an enigmatic smile on his face. It was not clear whether he was joking.

“I am going to be 82 years old,” Castro added. “I have the right to retire, don’t you think?”

When reporters continued to shout questions about his plans for the next five years, Castro replied: “Why are you so incredulous?”

He said to listen carefully on Sunday.

“It will be an interesting speech,” he said. “Pay attention.”

Castro’s tone was light and his comments came in informal remarks at a mausoleum dedicated to soldiers from the former Soviet Union who have died around the world.

The Cuban leader has spoken before of his desire to implement a two-term limit for all Cuban government positions, including the presidency. He has also alluded to the limited time he has left to overhaul the island’s weak Marxist economy.

That has led many to speculate that this upcoming term would be his last, though term limits have never been codified into Cuban law.

In Washington, State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland had no comment on Castro’s remarks.

Most Havana residents had not heard about the comments, which were not shown on Cuban television, although other footage from his appearance with Medvedev was shown. Many reacted with skepticism.

“Who would they put in?” asked Marta Alvarez, a 45-year-old housewife walking through Old Havana. “But I don’t think it would be now. It would happen in five years.”

Castro will be 86 when his next term ends in 2018. Up until now, all eyes had been on who would emerge as Castro’s first and second vice presidents during Sunday’s proceedings. The positions are currently occupied by two loyal octogenarians who fought in the 1959 revolution.

Putting someone younger in one of those roles would be the first sign that Castro was settling on a potential next-generation successor, something he and his brother Fidel have never done, even as many comrades have succumbed to old age.

As far back as December 2010, Castro began to reflect on his responsibility, and that of his aging generation, to right Cuba’s economy, noting that the actuarial tables leave them few remaining years.

“The time we have left is short, the task is enormous,” he told lawmakers in his year-end speech that year. “I think we have an obligation … to set (the country) on the right course.”

When Raul Castro does leave the political stage, it would end more than a half century of unbroken rule by the two brothers, who came to power in 1959 at the head of a revolution against U.S.-backed strongman Fulgencio Batista.

Armando Gutierrez, a 78-year-old Cuban-American lawyer in Florida and veteran of the failed 1961 Bay of Pigs invasion, said he hoped Castro wasn’t joking about retiring, but doubted that whoever follows would bring true political change.

“Can you imagine 54 years?” Gutierrez said. “Not even the Roman emperors lasted that long.”

Relations with the United States have been sour since shortly after the revolution. One of the key provisions of the 51-year U.S. economic embargo on Cuba stipulates that it cannot be lifted while either of the Castros is in power.

Castro has implemented a series of economic and social reforms since taking over from his ailing brother in 2006, but the island is still ruled by one party. Fidel Castro is 86 and retired, and has seemed increasingly frail in recent appearances.

The elder Castro was also visited by Medvedev, Cuban state-run media reported. Communist Party newspaper Granma reported that the two countries signed an agreement on restructuring more than $20 billion in Soviet-era debt Cuba owes.

The terms of the restructuring weren’t announced. The debt has been a point of contention between Cuba and Russia for years. It was originally built up in rubles to pay the Soviet Union for services provided in the 1980s, and Cuba has questioned how much it should be worth today.

HAVANA: It was a little before 10 p.m. that February night in 1898 when a fiery explosion roiled the normally calm waters of Havana Harbor, blowing out windows in the city and sinking the USS Maine to the bottom of the bay, just the mast and some twisted metal wreckage left to poke above the waves.

Havana’s monument to the 266 U.S. sailors who died that night was dedicated 27 years later as a tribute to lasting Cuban-American friendship, a thank-you for Washington’s help in shedding the yoke of Spanish colonial rule, which was known for its cruelty.

The years since have been unkind to the twin-columned monument, and to U.S.-Cuba ties. But while relations between Washington and Havana remain in deep freeze, the monument, at least, is now getting a facelift.

The restoration project is fraught with symbolism, with the monument’s scars telling the story of more than a century of shifts in the complex relationship and changing interpretations of the marble structure.

“Of the monuments in Havana, that’s one that really is struggling to contain all of these different historical episodes,” said Timothy Hyde, a historian of Cuban architecture at Harvard University’s Graduate School of Design. “It doesn’t just symbolize any longer this single moment of the sinking of the Maine. It symbolizes all these periodic moments of antipathy and hostility and challenges between the two nation-states.”

Soon after the USS Maine suddenly sank off the coast of this Caribbean capital 115 years ago Friday, the United States accused Spanish colonial authorities of responsibility in the blast.

“Remember the Maine!” became a rallying cry in the States, and after the U.S. victory in the brief Spanish-American war, Spain ceded control over Cuba, Puerto Rico, the Philippines and Guam.

The Maine monument was inaugurated in 1925 and bears the names of all 266 sailors. Two statues standing shoulder-to-shoulder at the base represent a maternal America guiding the maiden Cuba into independence.

Words etched into the marble quote an 1898 U.S. congressional resolution recognizing a free Cuba, and the massive bronze eagle that long capped the monument faced due north to symbolize Washington’s promise to return home after helping the island break from Spain.

“To me it signifies a legacy of loyalty … friendship between two peoples,” said Julio Dominguez Santos, the monument’s night watchman for 17 years.

But things didn’t work out as that earlier Congress had hoped.

Many Cubans resented the 1901 Platt Amendment, which said Washington retained the right to intervene militarily as a condition of ending the postwar U.S. occupation.

The U.S. did in fact intervene several times, and American business and mafia gangs came to dominate many aspects of the island in the run-up to the 1959 revolution — leading many Cubans to feel like the eagle had never flown back north.

Soon after Fidel Castro’s rebels marched victoriously into Havana, the tense marriage rapidly careened toward divorce and diplomatic ties were severed in 1961. Following the doomed, U.S.-backed Bay of Pigs invasion months later, the more than 3-ton eagle was ripped from the monument during an anti-American protest and splintered into pieces.

“The eagle was torn down after the triumph of the revolution because it’s the symbol of imperialism, the United States, and the revolution ended all that,” said Ernesto Moreno, a 77-year-old Havana resident who remembers waking up one day to see the statue gone. “I found it to be a very good thing, and I think most Cubans agreed at the time.”

Castro’s government added a new inscription to the base of the broken monument alleging the Maine victims had been “sacrificed by imperialist greed in its zeal to seize the island of Cuba,” a reference to speculation that the U.S. deliberately blew up the Maine to justify a war against Spain.

Historians say the explosion was probably an accidental ignition of the Maine’s own munitions, but the conspiracy theory still commonly circulates in Cuba.

The Communist Party newspaper Granma, for example, has written in the past that the Maine victims were “immolated to serve as a pretext for American intervention that in 1898 prevented the island from gaining true independence” — ignoring the fact that Cuban rebels had failed to oust the Spanish on their own for decades.

A Granma article published on Friday’s anniversary was less certain, but still said American self-sabotage “cannot be ruled out, given the interest among the more aggressive imperialist circles in instigating war.”

The Maine eagle’s head was mysteriously delivered to Swiss diplomats, who had agreed to act as protectors of U.S. property in Cuba. Today it hangs in a conference room at the U.S. Interests Section, which Washington maintains in Havana instead of an embassy.

After relations were partially re-established in 1977, longtime foreign service officer Wayne Smith, who had been in Havana in 1961, returned and arranged to see the body, wings and tail, which are currently out of sight in a musty storage room of the Havana City History Museum.

“I have been the faithful custodian of the body,” City Historian Eusebio Leal, told The Associated Press. “Smith told me that until the body and the head are reunited, there won’t be good relations between Cuba and the United States.”

U.S. diplomats also possess the monument’s original eagle, toppled by a hurricane in 1926. Since 1954 that earlier bird has presided over the immaculate gardens of the Interests Section chief’s official residence.

A plaque at the base calls the eagle “a symbol of the enduring friendship” between Cuba and the U.S.

“I’m just happy we have it. I don’t know how it got here. Somebody got ahold of it, saw it and gave it to us,” said John Caulfield, the Interests Section chief since 2011.

Coincidentally, the U.S. State Department recently sent two specialists down to repair the first eagle, which was cracked and tarnished green.

Like many structures in Havana, the monument on the seafront Malecon boulevard had become seedy from decades of neglect. Marble lion heads were damaged or looted, and the fountains were used as trash receptacles by passers-by.

The repair seems to be part of a general restoration of hundreds of historic structures by Leal’s office, unrelated to any change in U.S.-Cuban ties.

Workers in blue jumpers recently removed scaffolding that shrouded the columns for months, revealing gleaming-white marble scrubbed clean of grime. Gone are the rusty stains beneath the two 10-inch guns that were salvaged from the Maine. The statues are a lustrous bronze again after corrosive salt air turned them bright green.

Leal said his office intends to finish remaining tasks such as getting the fountains working and re-landscaping two adjacent plazas in the coming months.

But amid the ongoing renovation, a return to the monument’s original spirit of friendship seems unlikely — at least for now.

“Certainly we have as much wish for that to be true today as we did at the time,” Caulfield said of the congressional resolution inscribed on the monument supporting Cuba’s right to be free. “I hope that we and the Cubans will see a new relationship with the United States that allows those words to be true.”

Leal said he also hopes for warmer ties, but first Washington must end the 51-year economic embargo and abolish “anti-Cuban” laws.

Can he envision a bronze eagle resuming its perch someday atop the monument?

“On the occasion of a friendly visit by a U.S. president,” Leal said. “I wish President Obama would be the one to do that.”