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By Jason Webb

MADRID, April 28 (Reuters) - Spain will not extradite former Argentine President Isabel Peron after a court ruled on Monday that she was not linked to cases of disappearance and torture during her government in the 1970s.

The 77-year-old widow of Juan Peron, who has been under house arrest in a wealthy Madrid suburb since early last year, is wanted in Argentina for the disappearances of two men and torture of one of them in 1976, months before she was overthrown in a military coup.

Spain's High Court said in a ruling there was no evidence that crimes were committed by Peron in relation to the cases.

The former cabaret dancer, whose real name is Maria Estela Martinez, met populist politician Juan Peron in a nightclub in Panama during his enforced exile from Argentina a few years after the death of his second wife, Evita.

Her husband returned triumphant to their home country in 1973 and made her his deputy. On his death the following year, she became the first female president in the Americas.

Isabel presided over a period of increasing economic and political chaos and an Argentine court suspected her of links to far-right "Triple A" death squads, believed to have killed hundreds of people.

She spent five years in prison after the coup, before being sentenced to an eight-year term on March 20, 1981, for embezzling public funds. She was released later that year and flew to Spain, where she keeps a low profile without links to Argentina's Peronist movement, within which she is largely seen as discredited. (Reporting by Jason Webb; editing by Keith Weir)

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