Perón's Widow Faces Asset Freeze

The former Argentine president "Isabelita" Perón faced further legal problems yesterday when lawyers asked for some $7m (£3.5m) of assets which she had inherited from her husband Juan Domingo Perón to be frozen by a Spanish court.

Ms Perón, Argentina's first woman president, who ruled from June 1974 to 1976, when she was deposed by a military junta, is already subject to an extradition process that aims to bring her back to Argentina on human rights charges.

She failed to turn up at the Spanish court where a judge was due to consider the freeze on her assets. Her lawyer presented a doctor's certificate stating that the 75-year-old former cabaret dancer whose real name is María Estela Martínez, was suffering from manic depression, according to local press reports.

The Italian-based Funpaz NGO, which says it looks after poor Italian immigrants in Argentina, claims that she illegally appropriated its assets, including property in Spain, when Juan Perón died in 1974. She was his third wife.

The row over the money comes just two months after she was arrested at her home in the Spanish town of Villanueva de la Canada after an Argentinian court issued an international arrest warrant for her.