Isabel Perón, the former Argentinian president and widow of the caudillo Juan Perón, was arrested at her home in Madrid on Friday night after a judge in her home country launched an investigation into alleged human rights abuses during her tumultuous rule in the 1970s.
Police acted on an international arrest warrant issued by Judge Raul Acosta. Perón was driven to court on Friday night and bailed pending an extradition request expected to follow by the end of February. Acosta wants her extradited to Argentina to face questions about dissident killings during her 20-month rule.
Perón, who is believed to be 75, is accused of having links to right-wing death squads that abducted and murdered left-wing activists during her 1974-1976 rule, a chaotic period ending with a coup that ousted her and ushered in a dictatorship.
Acosta, of the province of Mendoza, ordered the arrest in connection with three decrees she signed instructing security forces to crack down on ”subversive elements”. The judge also wants to question her over the disappearance of Héctor Aldo Fagetti Gallego in February 1976, one month before she was overthrown.
The order came after a wave of investigations into Argentina’s ”dirty war”, a state-backed campaign against left-wing opponents from the mid-1970s to 1983 during which up to 30 000 people disappeared. The judicial reckoning was made possible by a Supreme Court ruling in 2005 that annulled two 1980s amnesty laws blocking prosecution of human rights cases.
Dozens of former members of the security force have been questioned about their role in the junta that seized power in 1976, but the arrest order for Perón has turned the spotlight on crimes committed during the preceding two years, when she was in office.
”This seems to drive home the point that a lot of violence against the left wing started during the Perónist time, before and not during the junta,” Felipe Noguera, a political analyst, told the Associated Press. Some estimate that 1 500 disappeared during Perón’s rule.
Mixed reaction
Hebe de Bonafini, an activist of the Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo, called the announcement ”spectacular” and said she hoped it would bring to light a ”part of our history that was dark, obscure and papered over”.
But some are uneasy about pursuing the former president. When the possibility was floated in November, the governor of Mendoza province said the probe was ”exaggerated” and that Acosta was trying to pin blame for military abuses on Perón.
One of the world’s first democratic female heads of state, Perón was a nightclub dancer who became a politician after marrying Juan Perón, who was 35 years her senior. The retired veteran caudillo made an electoral comeback in 1973. His second wife, Eva Perón, died in 1952.
When Perón died a year into his term, his widow, widely known as Isabelita, became president and inherited a political and economic crisis that pitted left-wing guerrillas and activists against right-wing paramilitaries, including the Argentina Anticommunist Alliance, known as Triple A, a state-backed death squad. The president’s friendship with José López Rega, a leader of Triple A, was said to be based partly on a shared interest in the occult.
Amid strikes and spiralling inflation, Perón was overthrown in a bloodless military coup. After five years under house arrest in Buenos Aires, she moved to Spain and kept a low profile in a suburb of Madrid, apart from a brief return to Argentina in 1984 after democracy had been restored.
Spanish media reported on Friday that she faced investigation by Spain’s courts over the inheritance she received from the former dictator.
An Italy-based foundation that worked with Juan Perón during his exile claims Isabel Perón owes it £3,9-million.
Perón made no comment on Friday. — Guardian Unlimited