United States Nerve Agents Loophole: Okay to use Riot Control Agents in Law Enforcement
[Photo-Image: WWI soldier releasing nerve gas]
The report published by the UK’s The Independent, Government ‘may sanction nerve-agent use on rioters’, scientists fear, exposed a ‘loophole’ in the 1993 International Chemical Weapons Convention Ban in the United Kingdom: “an exemption for certain chemical agents that could be used for “peaceful” domestic purposes such as policing and riot control”. Over in the United States, a similar loophole, Rule 75, which includes ‘riot control agents’ can be used by law enforcement.
The Independent:
“A high-level group of experts has asked the Government to clarify its position on whether it intends to develop “incapacitating chemical agents” for a range of domestic uses that go beyond the limited use of chemical irritants such as CS gas for riot control.
The experts were commissioned by the Royal Society, the UK’s national academy of sciences, to investigate new developments in neuroscience that could be of use to the military. They concluded that the Government may be preparing to exploit a loophole in the Chemical Weapons Convention allowing the use of incapacitating chemical agents for domestic law enforcement.
The 1993 convention bans the development, stockpiling and use of nerve agents and other toxic chemicals by the military but there is an exemption for certain chemical agents that could be used for “peaceful” domestic purposes such as policing and riot control.”
The US Naval Handbook (1995) states:
The United States considers that use of riot control agents in armed conflict was not prohibited by the 1925 [Geneva] Gas Protocol. However, the United States formally renounced first use of riot control agents in armed conflict except in defensive military modes to save lives. Uses of riot control agents in time of armed conflict which the United States considers not to be violative of the 1925 [Geneva] Gas Protocol include:
1. Riot control situations in areas under effective U.S. military control, to include control of rioting prisoners of war.
2. Situations in which civilians are used to mask or screen attacks and civilian casualties can be reduced or avoided.
3. Rescue missions involving downed aircrews or escaping prisoners of war.
4. Protection of military supply depots, military convoys, and other military activities in rear echelon areas from civil disturbances, terrorist activities, or paramilitary operations.
Such employment of riot control agents by U.S. forces in armed conflict requires NCA approval.Use of riot control agents as a “method of warfare” is prohibited by the 1993 Chemical Weapons Convention. However, that term is not defined by the Convention. The United States considers that this prohibition applies in international as well as internal armed conflict but that it does not apply in normal peacekeeping operations, law enforcement operations, humanitarian and disaster relief operations, counter-terrorist and hostage rescue operations, and non-combatant rescue operations conducted outside of such conflicts.
The United States also considers that it is permissible to use riot control agents against other than combatants in areas under direct U.S. military control, including to control rioting prisoners of war and to protect convoys from civil disturbances, terrorists and paramilitary organizations in rear areas outside the zone of immediate combat.
In 2001, reports the Israeli army lobbed ‘strange’ canisters that released multicolored at Palestinians–the smoke changed from white to yellow to black–that produced an odor that smelled like mint and ‘tasted like sugar’.
“Forty people were admitted to Al-Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis “in an odd state of hysteria and nervous breakdown”, suffering from “fainting and spasms.” Sixteen of them had to be transferred to the intensive care unit. Doctors “reported the Israeli use of gas that appeared to cause convulsions.”(7)
At the Gharbi refugee camp, also in Khan Younis, thirty-two people “were treated for serious injuries” following exposure to the gas. Dr. Salakh Shami at Al-Amal Hospital reported that the hospital received “about 130 patients suffering from gas inhalation from February 12.”(8)
Bewildered medical personnel had “never seen anything..like the gas at Tufa.” Victims were “jumping up and down, left and right..thrashing limbs around”, suffering “with convulsions..a kind of hysteria. They were all shaking.” Others were already unconscious. An hour or two later, they would come to. And the convulsions and the vomiting and disorientation and pain would return. And so it would go, for days or, for some, weeks to come.(9)”
