Even though Cuban doctor Amauris Samartino held permanent-residence status in Bolivia, the country deported him to Colombia for criticizing Bolivia's president.

LA PAZ, Bolivia - (AP) -- A Cuban dissident arrested last month in Bolivia for criticizing President Evo Morales' close ties to Havana was deported Tuesday to Colombia rather than to Cuba, as he had feared.

Cuban doctor Amauris Samartino held permanent-residence status in Bolivia but was arrested in late December in the city of Santa Cruz, 340 miles east of La Paz, under a law forbidding immigrants to be involved in Bolivian politics.

Cuba had refused to accept Samartino, who with 11 fellow dissidents fled Cuba in 1999 on a boat bound for Florida. Picked up by U.S. immigration authorities, the group was taken to the Guantánamo Bay detention center before U.S. officials helped find them a home in Bolivia.

The United States also declined to take Samartino, but U.S. officials helped arrange his temporary placement in Colombia, whose right-wing government is Washington's closest ally in the region.

''It's very difficult for me because I had built a life here, six years,'' Samartino said in a radio interview shortly before his departure Tuesday morning, speaking on his cellphone from the airport in El Alto, near La Paz. ``This is something that has happened for many years of my life, having to wander from one place to the next. But that's the choice we have to make to think the way we do.''

Samartino's lawyer, Rodolfo Téllez, told The Associated Press that Samartino's wife, a native Bolivian, remains in Santa Cruz but will seek to join him soon.

''We still don't know which country he'll go to permanently,'' Téllez told The AP.

The Bolivian government has accused Samartino of having ties to a radical separatist movement in Santa Cruz, a center of conservative opposition to Morales.

Samartino denies the accusation, and claims to have evidence that covert Cuban agents are operating in Bolivia.

The Bolivian government originally considered Samartino a political refugee and granted him permanent-residence status shortly after his arrival. Morales' administration officials have said Samartino no longer holds refugee status and can therefore be deported.