Georgian authorities used a World War I chemical weapon to quell anti-government protesters last year, evidence gathered by the BBC suggests.
“You can feel it [the water] burning,” said one of the demonstrators about a water cannon turned on him and others in the streets of the capital Tbilisi. A feeling, he said, that could not be washed away immediately.
Demonstrators against the suspension by the Georgian government of its bid for accession to the European Union also complained of other symptoms – shortness of breath, coughing, and vomiting that lasted for weeks.
One of the protesters, Gela Khasaia, says his skin was burned after being sprayed with a cannon. [Gela Khasaia]
The BBC World Service spoke to chemical weapons experts, whistleblowers from the Georgia riot police, and doctors, and found that the evidence points to the use of an agent the French military called “camite”.
The Georgian authorities said the findings of our investigation were “absurd” and the police had acted legally in response to the “illegal actions of brutal criminals”.
Camite was deployed by France against Germany during the First World War. There is little documentation of its subsequent use, but it is thought to have been taken out of circulation at some point in the 1930s, due to concerns about its long-term effects. CS gas – often called “tear gas” – was used as a replacement.
Konstantine Chakhunashvili was one of those who gathered outside the Georgian parliament in Tbilisi during the first week of protests – which began on 28 November 2024. The protesters were alarmed by the ruling party’s announcement that it was suspending the EU accession talks. The goal of EU membership is enshrined in the Georgian constitution.
Dr. Konstantine Chakhunashvili conducted a study on the symptoms of the protesters after he himself suffered ill effects from the water cannon [BBC]
Georgia police responded with a variety of riot control measures including the use of water cannon, pepper spray and CS gas.
Dr. Chakhunashvili, a pediatrician who was among those sprayed by the cannons, and who took part in many of the demonstrations, said that his skin felt like it was burning for days, and the feeling could not be washed away. In fact, he said, “it was worse when he tried to wash it”.
Dr. Chakhunashvili wanted to find out if others suffered similar effects. He therefore appealed, through social media, for those also targeted by crowd control measures during the first week of the demonstrations to fill in a survey. Almost 350 people got in touch, and almost half said they suffered one or more side effects for more than 30 days.
These long-term symptoms ranged from headache, to fatigue, cough, shortness of breath and vomiting.
Since then, his study has been peer-reviewed and accepted for publication by Toxicology Reports, an international journal.
Sixty-nine of those surveyed by Dr. Chakhunashvili were also examined by him and found to have a “much higher prevalence of abnormalities” in the electrical signals in the heart.
Dr. Chakhunashvili’s report stated the conclusion that local journalists, doctors, and civil rights organizations had reached – that the water cannon must be laced with a chemical. They had asked the government to identify what was used, but the Ministry of Internal Affairs – responsible for the police – refused.
Several high-level whistleblowers connected to the Department of Special Operations – the official name of Georgia’s riot police – helped the BBC determine the likely identity of this chemical.
A former weapons chief at the department, Lasha Shergelashvili, believes it is the same compound he was asked to test for use in water cannons in 2009.
Lasha Shergelashvili handled weapons for Georgia’s riot police [Lasha Shergelashvili]
The effects of that product, he says, were different from anything he had experienced before. He found it difficult to breathe after standing close to where he had been sprayed, and he and the 15-20 colleagues who tested with him could not easily wash off.
“We noticed that the effect was not diminishing, as is the case [regular] tear gas. Even after we washed our faces with water, and then with a special solution of baking soda and water, which was prepared beforehand, we still could not breathe freely.”
Mr. Shergelashvili says that as a result of his tests, he recommended against the use of the chemical. But he says that the water cannon vehicles were nevertheless loaded with it – and that this remained the case at least until 2022, when he quit his job and left the country.
Speaking from his new home in Ukraine, he tells the BBC that when he saw footage of the protests last year, he immediately suspected that the protesters were being subjected to the same chemical.
The colleagues he stayed in contact with, and who are still in office, also told him that this is the case, he adds.
And the BBC spoke to another former high-level police officer who confirmed that everything that was loaded into the water cannon vehicles when Mr. Shergelashvili was in the position was the same compound deployed in the protests of November-December 2024.
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UK viewers can watch more on Global Eye at 19:00, 1 December on BBC Two
When Mr Shergelashvili was asked if the product he tested could have been just CS gas – which irritates the eyes, skin and respiratory system, but only temporarily – he said it appeared to be much stronger than that.
“I can’t name an example or compare it to anything [else],” he said, adding that it was “probably 10 times” more powerful than more conventional riot control agents.
“For example, if you throw this chemical on the ground, you won’t be able to stay in that area for the next two or three days, even if you wash it off with water.”
Mr. Shergelashvili does not know the name of the chemical he was asked to test.
But the BBC managed to obtain a copy of the Department of Special Tasks inventory, dated December 2019.
We discovered that it contained two unnamed chemicals. These were simply listed as “Chemical liquid UN1710” and “Chemical powder UN3439”, along with instructions on how to mix them.
We wanted to check if this inventory was authentic, so we showed it to another high-ranking ex-police officer from the riot police who confirmed that it looked genuine. He identified the two unnamed chemicals as those likely added to the water cannon.
Our next step was to work out what these chemicals were.
UN1710 was easy to identify as this is the code for trichlorethylene (TCE), a solvent that allows other chemicals to dissolve in water. Then we had to work out which chemical was helping to dissolve it.
UN3439 was much more difficult to identify because it is an umbrella code for a whole range of industrial chemicals, all of which are dangerous.
The only one of these we have found that was ever used as a riot control agent is bromobenzyl cyanide, also known as camite, developed by the Allies for use in the First World War.
We asked Prof. Christopher Holstege, the world’s leading expert on toxicology and chemical weapons, to assess whether our evidence indicated that camite was the likely agent used.
Huge crowds outside the Georgia parliament in November last year [Shutterstock]
Based on the results of Dr. Chakhunashvili’s study, the victim’s testimony, the riot police inventory, and Mr. Shergelashvili’s account of the chemical tests, Prof. Holstege believes this to be the case.
“Based on the available evidence…the clinical findings reported by both those exposed and by other witnesses are consistent with bromobenzyl cyanide.”
He ruled out the possibility that the symptoms were caused by more conventional crowd control measures, such as CS gas, which was also being deployed by Georgia riot police last year.
“The persistence of clinical effects … is not consistent with typical agents used for crowd dispersal, such as CS,” he said.
“I have never seen camite being utilized in modern society. Camite is very irritating [and] persistent with its irritation.”
He speculated that it would be used because it would act as a strong deterrent.
“It kept people away for a long time. They couldn’t decontaminate [themselves]. They would have to go to the hospital. They would have to leave the area. If this is indeed the case – that this chemical has been brought back – this is actually very dangerous.”
Camite was briefly used as a riot control agent by American police after World War I, but was abandoned after safer options such as CS gas were invented.
According to international law, police forces are allowed to use chemicals as crowd control agents as long as they are considered proportionate and only have short-term effects.
Because there are safer and more conventional riot control agents available to police, an outdated and more powerful agent could be classified as a chemical weapon, according to weapons experts consulted by the BBC.
Our findings were concerning, said UN Special Rapporteur on Torture, Alice Edwards. Ms Edwards previously wrote to the Georgian government about allegations of police violence and torture during the protests.
Alice Edwards of the UN: “Populations should never be subjected to experiments” [BBC]
The lack of strict regulation on the use of chemicals in water cannons is a problem she would like to address: “This leads me to consider [this practice] as an experimental weapon. And populations should never be subjected to experiments. This is absolutely in violation of human rights law.”
She emphasized that any effect of a riot control measure must be temporary under international law, and that the symptoms described “are beyond what is considered temporary and acceptable. Therefore all those cases must be investigated, including under the rubric of torture or other ill-treatment”.
The Georgian authorities described our findings as “deeply frivolous” and “absurd”.
She said that law enforcement acted “within the limits of the law and the constitution” when they responded to the “illegal actions of brutal criminals”.
The protests on Tbilisi’s Rustaveli Avenue have decreased in size as the government has increased fines and prison terms, but not in frequency.
Almost every night for the past year, protesters have called for the resignation of a government they accuse of rigging the elections, pandering to Russian interests, and passing increasingly draconian legislation against civil society.
The ruling Georgian Dream party has denied that the government or the party’s honorary chairman, Bidzina Ivanishvili, are either pro-Russia or pursuing Russian interests. He told the BBC that the legislative changes over the past year served the best interests of the “public welfare”.