HAVANA (Reuters) - A squad of Cuban security agents has shut down a protest by wives of jailed Cuban dissidents who camped out in Havana's Revolution Square to demand one ailing husband be moved to a hospital.

The five women, who had staged an unprecedented protest in a park adjacent to the square made famous by Cuban leader Fidel Castro's mass rallies, were hustled away by plainclothes police and driven to their homes in the middle of the night.

Gisela Delgado, wife of Hector Palacios, a Castro opponent serving a 25-year prison term, said about 50 security agents, half of them women, took the women by the arms and led them to Russian-made Lada police cars.

"There was a huge operation with lots of cars at 3 a.m. They took us by the arms and told us we had to go with them and drove us home in Ladas," Delgado said.

The protest began on Tuesday when Berta Soler, wife of jailed human rights activist Angel Moya, submitted a letter to Castro at the Communist Party headquarters above the square requesting her husband's transfer to a hospital.

Moya was sentenced to 20 years in prison last year during a crackdown on dissent that led to the jailing of 75 opponents. Soler said her husband was suffering severe back pain from a herniated disc and needed an operation.

The women, dressed entirely in white, camped out for almost two days with food, water and bedding to demand Moya's transfer.

Soler was received by officials of Cuba's Council of State on Wednesday. They told her the request was being expedited, but that she should end her protest.

"They told Berta the government will not tolerate pressures, and she should wait at home for a reply," Delgado said.

Soler said she would return to Revolution Square if she had not got an answer in 72 hours.

The vast, open square is communist-run Cuba's political heart, site of speeches by Castro since his revolution triumphed in 1959. It is dominated by an iron silhouette of legendary guerrilla fighter Che Guevara on the Interior Ministry facade.

In recent months, Cuban authorities have freed seven of the dissidents on health grounds.

The wives and mothers of jailed dissidents, known as the "ladies in white," have staged marches and held candlelight vigils dressed in white to demand their men be freed.

But this was the first time they had protested in Revolution Square, one of the best guarded places in Cuba.