Former Ivory Coast president Laurent Gbagbo and his wife, Simone, have been formally charged with "economic crimes", the first legal proceedings against the couple since they were ousted from power and put under house arrest in April.
Legal experts in the west African state say they expect further charges related to alleged "blood crimes" and possible human rights abuses against the couple.
As President Alassane Ouattara's government closes the net around former regime members suspected of using violence to hold on to power and looting the public treasury, there is growing criticism of the new administration, which has been accused of carrying out extrajudicial executions and arrests.
Gbagbo's refusal to relinquish power after he was defeated in a general election in November 2010 by Ouattara sparked four months of conflict and two weeks of civil war that left an estimated 3,000 people dead.
Since being ousted by Ouattara's forces, helped by troops from France and the United Nations, Gbagbo, 66, and his wife, 62, have been under house arrest separately.
At a press conference on Thursday, the Ivorian state prosecutor Simplice Kouadia Koffi said the couple were accused of "aggravated theft, attacks on the national economy, embezzlement of public funds and pillage". They were taken into custody and transported to a prison at Odiénné, in the north of the country.
Their arrest brings to 80 the number of supporters of the former regime detained since the end of the conflict, including Gbagbo's French-born son, Michel, 41, a professor at Abidjan University. Ivorian authorities arrested 57 pro-Gbagbo soldiers and charged them with crimes including murder, kidnapping, attacking state security and buying illegal arms, in the past week.
Ouattara's government hopes that the international criminal court in The Hague will open an official inquiry into the unrest and try the former presidential couple for crimes against humanity.
However, several international NGOs have accused the current government of enforcing the "justice of the victorious". Last week the UN mission in the country claimed members of the ruling government's security forces, the FRCI, had carried out "extrajudicial executions, arbitrary arrests and illegal detentions". Amnesty International has also accused government forces of carrying out reprisals against those seen as pro-Gbagbo.
