BBC Investigation Uncovers Use of Toxic WWI Chemical Against Georgian Protesters

Georgia's authorities used a World War One-era chemical weapon to quell anti-government protesters last year, evidence gathered by the BBC suggests.

You could feel [the water] burning, one of the protesters said of water cannon turned on him and others on the streets of the capital Tbilisi. A sensation, he said, which could not immediately be washed off.

Demonstrators against the Georgian government's suspension of its European Union accession bid have complained of other symptoms too - shortness of breath, coughing, and vomiting that lasted for weeks.

The BBC World Service has spoken to chemical weapons experts, whistleblowers from Georgia's riot police, and doctors, and found the evidence points to the use of an agent that the French military named camite.

The Georgian authorities said our investigation findings 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 World War One. There is little documentation of its subsequent use, but it is believed to have been taken out of circulation at some point in the 1930s, because of concerns about its long-lasting effects. CS gas - often referred to as tear gas - was used as a replacement.

Konstantine Chakhunashvili was one of those who gathered outside Georgia's parliament in Tbilisi during the first week of protests - which began on 28 November 2024. Demonstrators were incensed by the ruling party's announcement that it was pausing EU accession talks. The goal of EU membership is enshrined in Georgia's constitution.

Georgia's police responded with a variety of riot-control measures including the use of water cannon, pepper spray, and CS gas. Dr. Chakhunashvili, a paediatrician who was among those sprayed by the cannons, and who has taken part in many demonstrations, said his skin felt like it was burning for days, and the sensation couldn't be washed away. In fact, he said, it was worse when trying to wash it off.

Dr. Chakhunashvili wanted to find out if others had suffered similar effects. So he appealed, via social media, for those also targeted by crowd control measures during the first week of the demonstrations to fill out a survey. Nearly 350 people got in touch, and almost half said they had suffered one or more side effects for more than 30 days.

These long-term symptoms ranged from headaches to fatigue, coughs, shortness of breath, and vomiting.

His study has since been peer-reviewed and has been 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 significantly higher prevalence of abnormalities in the electrical signals in the heart.

Dr. Chakhunashvili's report echoed the conclusion that local journalists, doctors, and civil rights organisations had come to - that the water cannon must have been laced with a chemical. They had called on the government to identify what had been used, but the Ministry of Internal Affairs - responsible for the police - refused.

Several high-level whistleblowers connected to the Special Tasks Department - the official name of Georgia's riot police - helped the BBC determine this chemical's likely identity. A former head of weaponry at the department, Lasha Shergelashvili, believes it is the same compound he was asked to test for use in water cannon in 2009.

The effects of that product, he says, were unlike anything he had previously experienced. He found it difficult to breathe after standing close to where it had been sprayed, and he and the 15-20 colleagues who tested it with him could not easily wash it off.

Mr. Shergelashvili says that as a result of his tests, he recommended against the chemical's use. But he says the water cannon vehicles were nevertheless loaded with it - and that this remained the case at least up until 2022, when he quit his job and left the country.

Speaking from his new home in Ukraine, he tells the BBC that when watching footage of the protests last year, he immediately suspected that demonstrators were being subjected to the same chemical. Colleagues he has remained in touch with, and who are still in post, have also told him this is the case, he adds.

And the BBC spoke to another former high-level police officer who confirmed that whatever was loaded into the water cannon vehicles when Mr. Shergelashvili was in position was the same compound deployed in the protests of November-December 2024.

Based on the results of Dr. Chakhunashvili's study, victim testimony, the riot police inventory, and Mr. Shergelashvili's account of the chemical tests, Prof. Christopher Holstege, a world-leading toxicology and chemical weapons expert, assessed whether evidence pointed to camite being the likely agent used.

He ruled out the likelihood of the symptoms being caused by more conventional crowd control measures, such as CS gas, which was also being deployed by Georgia's riot police last year. The persistence of the clinical effects... is not consistent with the typical agents used for crowd dispersal, such as CS, he stated.

Camite was briefly used as a riot control agent by the American police post-World War One but was abandoned after safer options such as CS gas were invented. Under international law, police forces are allowed to use chemicals as crowd-control agents as long as they are considered proportionate and have only short-term effects. Given there are safer and more conventional riot-control agents available to police, an obsolete and more potent agent could be classified as a chemical weapon, according to weapons experts consulted by the BBC.

The lack of strict regulation around the use of chemicals in water cannon is a problem Alice Edwards, the UN Special Rapporteur on Torture, is keen to address, stating: Populations should never be subjected to experiments. This is absolutely in violation of human rights law. Georgia's authorities described our findings as deeply frivolous and absurd, asserting that law enforcement acted within the bounds of the law and constitution. The protests calling for the resignation of a government accused of rigging elections continue.