BOGOTA, Colombia -- Elizabeth Trujillo, who claimed to be a member of a medical team that treated Cuban President Fidel Castro for a grave illness, has a history of inventing stories, her former husband said Friday.

Dr. Felix Ochoa, 50, a Cuban doctor working in Colombia, said at a news conference that Trujillo is not a doctor, not even a nurse. He said she arrived in Colombia with him in September 1995 but left for Costa Rica a year ago, after he ended the marriage because of ``her strange behavior.''

Ochoa expressed puzzlement over Trujillo's story, published in The Herald July 19, that she was a surgeon who was present when Castro was admitted to a Havana hospital last October to be treated for a potentially fatal illness that affects the brain. He said she was living in Costa Rica at that time.

``The journalists were the victims of a deception,'' Ochoa said of the report. ``She never worked at that clinic [the Center for Medical and Surgical Research in Havana]. She studied a few months at a nursing school but didn't graduate. I met her when she worked as a secretary for a paper company in Havana.''

Trujillo ``is not trustworthy'' because she makes up stories and swindles people, he said. ``After a period of separation in 1994, she asked me to help her claim an inheritance in a dollar account in a Canadian bank, left to her by an uncle who died in the United States. It turned out to be a fairy tale.''

Ochoa also denied Trujillo's assertion that he is a half-brother of Gen. Arnaldo Ochoa, who was executed in Cuba in 1989 for alleged drug trafficking.