Evidence gathered by journalists, doctors and former security officials suggests that Georgian security forces may have used a World War I–era chemical agent against protesters during mass demonstrations at the end of 2024, opening a deeply alarming chapter in the country’s political crisis. According to these findings, riot police are suspected of deploying a compound known as camite, or bromobenzyl cyanide, mixed with water from police cannons to disperse crowds protesting the suspension of Georgia’s EU accession talks.
The protests, which erupted in late November 2024 and continued into December, brought tens of thousands of people onto the streets of Tbilisi and other cities. Demonstrators were angered by the government’s decision to effectively freeze negotiations with the European Union, seeing it as a betrayal of Georgia’s constitutional commitment to a European future and further proof of democratic backsliding. The authorities responded with a broad arsenal of riot control tactics: tear gas, pepper spray, rubber bullets and water cannon. Reports of excessive force and serious injuries were already widespread.
What emerged later were accounts that pointed to something far more serious than standard crowd-control measures. Protesters hit by water cannon jets described a strange, intense burning sensation that did not disappear once they moved away from the scene. Many insisted that attempts to wash the substance off with water actually made the pain worse. Among those affected was paediatrician Dr Konstantine Chakhunashvili, who joined the protests as a citizen and later became one of the key medical voices documenting what had happened. He recalled that his skin burned for days after being sprayed, far beyond anything he had experienced with ordinary riot agents such as tear gas.
Alarmed by the complaints, Chakhunashvili launched a systematic inquiry. He appealed publicly for anyone who had been exposed to water cannon or gas during the first week of demonstrations to contact him. Around 350 people responded. They described symptoms that went well beyond a brief irritation: breathing difficulties, persistent cough, chest tightness, vomiting, severe skin burning and prolonged fatigue. Roughly half of those surveyed reported side effects that lasted longer than a month. In a smaller group who underwent detailed examinations, the doctor noted worrying irregularities in heart function, which raised questions about potential long-term toxicity.
While the medical team was gathering data, journalists began to investigate what exactly Georgian riot police had been using. Two former senior officers from the Special Tasks Department, the unit responsible for major protest operations, provided crucial testimony. One, a former head of weapons now in exile, said he had first been asked in 2009 to test an unknown chemical agent for use with water cannons. He concluded that it was too dangerous and recommended against deploying it. According to his account, this advice was ignored, and the substance continued to be used for years. A second former official confirmed that the same agent was still in use during the protests of November and December 2024.
Reporters then obtained an internal inventory list from the Special Tasks Department dating back to 2019. The document mentioned two unnamed chemical agents held by the unit. By cross-checking their designations with international records of riot-control chemicals, investigators identified bromobenzyl cyanide, known as camite, as the only compound on the list with a history of use against crowds. Camite was originally developed by the French military and used on the Western Front during World War I. It was gradually abandoned in the 1930s because of concerns about its long-term health effects, and later displaced by less persistent agents such as CS gas.
To assess whether camite could explain the Georgian cases, toxicology experts compared the protesters’ symptoms with the known effects of various agents. They concluded that the pattern and duration of health problems did not match what would normally be expected from CS gas alone, especially given that many of those affected had previous experience with standard riot control measures. By contrast, the description of prolonged burning sensations, respiratory distress and lingering systemic effects fits what is known from historical and experimental data about bromobenzyl cyanide. One specialist, with extensive experience in chemical weapons and medical toxicology, warned that using camite in a modern civilian context would be “extremely dangerous” and fundamentally at odds with the principles that are supposed to govern police use of force.
The Georgian government has rejected the allegations in categorical terms. Officials have described the reports as absurd and politically motivated, insisting that police acted lawfully and used only internationally permitted tear gas and irritants to disperse “violent radicals”. They accuse critics, including foreign media, of trying to undermine the state and to damage Georgia’s reputation as it navigates a tense internal political struggle.
Yet the legal and ethical implications extend far beyond domestic politics. Under international norms, including the Chemical Weapons Convention, law enforcement authorities are allowed to use certain chemical agents for riot control, but only if their effects are short-lived, reversible and proportionate to the threat. The deliberate use of an obsolete, more toxic and long-lasting compound such as camite would risk blurring the line between riot control agents and prohibited chemical weapons. If a government chooses such a substance despite wide availability of safer alternatives, it becomes extremely difficult to justify that decision under the principle of proportionality.
International human rights experts have already voiced alarm. The UN Special Rapporteur on Torture and other independent observers have warned that employing a long-abandoned battlefield chemical against largely peaceful demonstrators, especially in a way that causes widespread, long-term harm, could amount to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment, if not outright torture. The case is likely to intensify pressure on Georgia from the European Union and the United States, where concerns about democratic backsliding, politicised justice and shrinking civic space were mounting even before these revelations.
For many Georgians, the central issue is not only which substance was used, but what that choice says about the nature of the state. The protests at the end of 2024 were driven by a desire to keep the country anchored in a European, rights-based order. If the price for defending that vision is exposure to chemicals once deployed on First World War battlefields, the gap between the government and a large portion of society will only widen. In that sense, the camite scandal has become a stark symbol of the crossroads at which Georgia now stands: between an increasingly authoritarian model of control and the European democratic path its citizens have repeatedly taken to the streets to demand.
