Ítalo Luder was a Peronist politician who became interim president of Argentina for 34 days during the turbulent 1970s. During his month in power he signed controversial decrees that authorised the repression of left-wing guerrilla groups. In 1983 he became the first Peronist presidential candidate to lose a democratic election.

Luder was born in Santa Fe province, in central Argentina, in 1916. He studied law in Santa Fe city and received his degree in 1938. He then worked as a professor of constitutional law at various Argentine universities.

In 1949 Luder was appointed to the constituent assembly for the Peronist party and played a leading role in drawing up a new constitution under the recently-elected president, Juan Domingo Perón.

When Perón was overthrown by a military coup in 1955 and forced into exile, he was tried by the new regime for “betraying the Fatherland”. The party chose Luder to defend their leader in court. However, Peronism was subsequently banned in Argentina for almost two decades.

The restrictions on the Peronist party were lifted in 1973, and Luder was elected to the senate, where he gained a reputation as a moderate politician. Two years later he was appointed president of the senate, a position that simultaneously placed him first in line for the presidency following the Ley de Acefalía, or Headless Law, that was passed on the same day.

The law’s aim was to distance the right-wing minister of social welfare, José López Rega, from power. He had become increasingly influential following Perón’s death in 1974, and the accession of his widow, María Estela (Isabel) Martínez de Perón, to the presidency. López Rega, nicknamed the Warlock, was also the founder of the paramilitary Argentine Anticommunist Alliance death squad, known as the Triple A. During these bleak years, Argentina was racked by political violence from both the right and the left.

As a result of the modified succession law, Luder became interim president of Argentina for just over a month on September 13, 1975 when Isabel Perón requested leave “for health reasons”.

During this short period in power he signed decrees that contravened the Constitution and extended the army’s prerogative to “annihilate the actions” of all “subversive elements” throughout the country. On Isabel Perón’s orders the military was already subduing the left-wing People’s Revolutionary Army in Tucumán province, in the northwest, under Operation Independence.

Luder’s decrees also created a Council for Interior Security that brought together the president and the heads of the armed forces.

Luder later maintained that “every last conscript” knew that the decrees “in no way referred to physical annihilation, nor the violation of the legal system”. Nevertheless, Argentina’s dirty war rapidly escalated, and on March 24, 1976, a further military coup overthrew Isabel Perón’s weakened government. The subsequent dictatorship, in power until 1983, then used the decrees to justify its own violent repression, in which up to 30,000 internal dissidents “disappeared”.

Luder, however, was not a supporter of the dictatorship, and he represented the Peronists in an alliance of the five main political parties that sought a return to democratic government.

The military dictatorship’s position became untenable following the failed attempt to capture the Falkland Islands in 1982. General Reynaldo Bignone faced mounting opposition, and could not further delay a restoration of democracy.

When political parties was legalised, the Peronists selected Luder to represent them in the October 1983 presidential election. However, he was convincingly beaten at the polls by Raúl Alfonsín of the liberal Radical Civic Union, despite obtaining over 40 per cent of the vote. The main reason was that, in the closing stages of the campaign, Luder announced his intention to honour the amnesty laws that protected members of the military government.

In 1989 Peronism made a political comeback, and Luder was briefly defence minister under the presidency of Carlos Menem. He was subsequently the Argentine ambassador to France. Luder’s last political post was at the state-owned oil company YPF, where he managed its shares during the mid-1990s privatisation.

In his latter years Luder suffered from Alzheimer’s disease. This restricted him from giving evidence at recent judicial proceedings involving Isabel Perón and former leaders of the Triple A. Luder himself did not escape charges surrounding the repression decrees, but his failing health prevented him from standing trial.

Luder married Isolda Fabris and they had two children.

Ítalo Argentino Luder, Argentine politician, was born on December 31, 1916. He died on May 25, 2008, aged 91