The former head of sport in East Germany and a leading sports doctor have been charged for their alleged roles in setting up a state-run doping system in the 1970s and 80s.

The state prosecutors in Berlin said the two had been charged with complicity to cause bodily harm in giving young female athletes banned hormones.

Manfred Ewald: His female athletes dominated sport in the 70s and 80s

Manfred Ewald, who is now 73, headed the East German Sports Federation, while 65-year-old Manfred Hoeppner was chief of the sports medicine service.

They are the most senior officials to be indicted after investigations into revelations of a state-run systematic doping policy, based on information from secret police doocuments and other files that came to light after the fall of the Berlin Wall.

The two men are charged with being an accessory to causing bodily harm to 142 young female swimmers and athletes through the admistration of banned drugs - which were officially called supporting methods.

'Vitamin pills'

The athletes have suffered from lasting side effects from taking the anabolic steroids.

Testing procedures were less effective during East Germany's sporting dominance

Earlier trials of coaches and doctors revealed that the drugs were often given in the guise of vitamin pills without the knowledge of the athletes or their parents.

The prosecutors said then that they hoped the trials would allow them to build cases against those responsible for setting up the doping programme which had helped East Germany at the time, become one of the powerhouses of world sport.