She appeared at Spain's National Court which released her conditionally three hours after her arrest, pending an extradition request from Argentina. The court said Argentina has 40 days to file the request and ordered Peron to appear at a police station every 15 days.
As Peron walked free to a car awaiting her outside the court, a group of protesters shouted at her. She did not speak to reporters.
Police acted on an international arrest warrant from an Argentine investigative judge who said he had questions about Peron's chaotic 20-month rule, a time when shadowy right-wing violence destabilized Argentina. The third wife of three-time president Juan Domingo Peron was ousted in the March 1976 coup that ushered in a seven-year dictatorship that waged a "dirty war" against its opponents.
Peron, 75, has lived in exile in Spain since 1981.
Her arrest marked the expansion of Argentina's human rights investigations beyond dictatorship-era crimes to the death squads that terrorized the nation before the 1976 coup.
Peron was taken into custody at her villa in the wealthy northern Madrid neighborhood of Villanueva de la Canada.
She was wanted for questioning about three decrees she approved in her brief presidential tenure, calling on armed forces to crack down on "subversive elements." She was also wanted for questioning in connection with the disappearance of leftist Hector Aldo Fagetti Gallego one month before the coup.
Maria Estela Martinez de Peron -- known as Isabel -- was sworn in as president in 1974 after the death of her husband, the former strongman and father of Argentina's ruling political party. She struggled to hold on to power as Argentina was convulsed by violence from leftist guerrillas and reprisals by death squads.
Her detention followed the recent arrests in Argentina and Spain of two suspected leaders of the "Triple A" death squad that human rights groups call a precursor to state-sponsored terror waged by the country's military rulers from 1976-83.
Political analyst Felipe Noguera noted that dozens of former police and military officers have been summoned for questioning since Argentina's Supreme Court in 2005 annulled a pair of 1980s amnesty laws blocking prosecution of human rights cases.
"What might be different is that her surname is Peron," Noguera said. "So this seems to drive home the point that a lot of violence against the left wing started during the Peronist time, before and not during the junta."
Previously, efforts to bring alleged human rights abusers to justice focused on crimes committed during the dictatorship, when at least 13,000 suspected leftists and other opponents of the regime were killed or disappeared.
Peron testified in 1997 in Madrid as a witness in a Spanish case probing crimes during the military dictatorship. She said then she recalled signing a law authorizing the "annihilation" of leftist guerrillas, but did not remember details. She also said that she was unaware of human rights abuses that began during her tenure and expanded after the military overthrew her.
Adolfo Perez Esquivel, the 1980 Nobel Peace laureate for his human rights work, told The Associated Press he believed the Triple A, short for the Argentina Anticommunist Alliance, was effectively part of a state structure and thus the beginnings of state-backed terror.
"Once and for all, we have to get to the bottom of this problem and find out how this terrorism was generated by the state," Perez Esquivel said. "The search for the truth must go in every direction."
In Argentina, families of the victims of the repression celebrated Peron's arrest.
"I believe state terror began before the coup," said Maria Adela Antokoletz, whose brother, a lawyer who defended leftists, was kidnapped shortly before the 1976 coup. "Those who signed these decrees knew perfectly well the nature of the campaign and what this repression would involve."
Human rights groups blame Triple A for at least 1,500 killings of government opponents from 1973 to 1976. The dead included leftists, trade activists, opposition lawmakers and intellectuals.
Some victims were abducted off streets and never seen again while others were found dead of bullet wounds, some with their hands hacked off or burned.
The violence set the stage for the dictatorship's crackdown on dissent, a campaign known as the "dirty war." Nearly 13,000 people are officially listed as dead or missing from that era, but human rights groups say the total is closer to 30,000. Civilian rule was restored in 1983.
Source:http://edition.cnn.com/2007/WORLD/americas/01/12/argentina.peron.ap/index.html
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