Evidence collected by the BBC suggests that the Georgian Government used a First World War–era chemical weapon last year to suppress anti-government protests, the BBC reports.

According to the publication, “Demonstrators protesting against the Georgian Government’s suspension of the process of joining the European Union complained of various symptoms — including burning eyes, shortness of breath, coughing and vomiting — which lasted for weeks.”

The BBC says it spoke to chemical-weapons experts from the World Service, members of Georgia’s special forces, and doctors, discovering that “the evidence points to the use of an agent that the French military called ‘cammite’.”

“Cammite” was used by France during the First World War against Germany. There is little documentation of its later use, but it is believed to have been discontinued from the 1930s onward due to concerns about its long-lasting effects. It was later replaced by CS gas — commonly known as tear gas.

According to the BBC, it obtained a copy of the Special Tasks Department’s inventory list, dated December 2019.

“We discovered it contained two unnamed chemicals. These were simply listed as "Chemical liquid UN1710" and "Chemical powder UN3439", along with instructions for how they should be mixed.

We wanted to check whether this inventory was authentic, so we showed it to another former high-ranking police officer from the riot police who confirmed it seemed genuine. He identified the two unnamed chemicals as those likely to have been added into the water cannon,” the BBC reports.

"Our next step was to work out what these chemicals were. UN1710 was easy to identify as this is the code for trichloroethylene (TCE), a solvent that enables other chemicals to dissolve in water. We then had to work out which chemical it was helping to dissolve.

UN3439 was much harder to identify because it is an umbrella code for a whole range of industrial chemicals, all of which are hazardous.

The only one of these we found to have ever been used as a riot-control agent is bromobenzyl cyanide, also known as camite, developed by the Allies for use in World War One."

The BBC asked Professor Christopher Holstege — a world-leading toxicologist and chemical-weapons expert — to assess whether the evidence indicated the use of cammite.

According to the publication, the expert stated that, based on the available evidence, the clinical symptoms described by witnesses were consistent with bromobenzyl cyanide.

The BBC notes that under international law, police forces are permitted to use chemicals for crowd control only if they are considered proportionate and have short-term effects.

However, weapons experts told the BBC that given law enforcement has access to safer and more traditional riot-control methods, the use of an outdated and more powerful agent could be classified as a chemical weapon.

“The findings are alarming,” said Alice Edwards, UN Special Rapporteur on Torture.According to the BBC, Edwards had previously written to the Georgian Government regarding allegations of police violence during protests.

Speaking to the BBC, she said that the lack of strict regulation around the use of chemicals in water cannons is an issue she wants to address.

“It does lead 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,” Edwards said.

She added that under international law any measure for riot control must be temporary, and the symptoms described by the protesters exceed what can be considered temporary and acceptable.

“Therefore, all such incidents must be investigated, including under the category of torture or other ill-treatment,” Edwards told the BBC.

The BBC notes that the Georgian Government called the publication’s findings “deeply unfounded and absurd,” stating that law-enforcement acted within Georgian law and the Constitution in responding to the illegal actions of violent offenders.