Composto tossico della Prima Guerra Mondiale spruzzato sui manifestanti georgiani, suggeriscono prove della BBC

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

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.