Poland: Days after being mistakenly awarded a prestigious medal for heroism, Wojciech Jaruzelski has been charged over his imposition of martial law on Poland in 1981, when his communist regime jailed thousands of people and banned the Solidarity movement.
"Gen Jaruzelski is charged with a communist crime for having led an armed organisation of a criminal character," said Przemyslaw Piatek of Poland's National Remembrance Institute (IPN), which keeps Poland's communist-era security archives.
The IPN said Gen Jaruzelski (82) could face up to 11 years in prison - three for violating the constitution and eight for other crimes including false imprisonment.
Thousands of Poles were arrested and jailed during martial law and about 100 died in clashes with the security forces.
After communism collapsed in Poland in 1989, parliament cleared Gen Jaruzelski of responsibility for those deaths, and he insisted that he imposed martial law to prevent the Soviet army invading the country to restore order.
Polish president Lech Kaczynski is a vehement right-winger who was arrested as a Solidarity activist and has long threatened to press charges against Gen Jaruzelski.
Earlier this week, Mr Kaczynski signed an order to honour Poles who were deported to Siberia by Soviet forces in 1940, without realising that Gen Jaruzelski was on the list, having been exiled with the rest of his aristocratic family when he was a teenager.
The gaffe humiliated the fiercely anti-communist Mr Kaczynski, and Gen Jaruzelski returned his medal, saying he did not wish to further embarrass the president.