In either situation, a sending government that discovers a breach of the assurances would have to acknowledge a violation of its own nonrefoulement obligation. A receiving government also has little incentive to abide by assurances against torture and ill-treatment. All of the receiving states identified in this report routinely violate their legally binding human rights treaty obligations by employing torture to effect state policy.58 They obviously believe that there is little to gain from observing those legal obligations. It is unlikely that governments that practice torture unconstrained by international legal commitments will rein in abuse on the basis of non-binding assurances. Indeed, states that torture routinely accompany their flagrant violations with insistent denials of abuse, often despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary. Such denials also obtain in individual cases of abuse despite diplomatic assurances of protection. For example, amidst serious and credible allegations that the two Egyptian men expelled from Stockholm to Cairo in December 2001 were tortured, the Egyptian authorities simply issued a blanket denial that torture or ill-treatment had occurred. The Egyptian government “refuted the allegations [of torture] as unfounded” and communicated to the Swedish authorities that the Egyptian authorities were “of the opinion that further investigations are not necessary.”59 The Swedish government appears to have little recourse in the face of such denials. When Maher Arar, a Syrian-Canadian binational, credibly alleged that he had been tortured in Syria after his transfer there by U.S. and Jordanian operatives following assurances from the Syrians, the Syrian authorities simply claimed that his allegations were not true—and the U.S. government accepted the Syrian denial of torture at face value (see section below on the United States).60 Taking the word of a government that routinely lies about torture only reinforces the value of denial over admission and correction. 58 Many states that continue to employ torture have ratified the Convention against Torture and other instruments that outlaw torture and ill-treatment, yet their governmental authorities often deny the existence of such abuses. These states, as documented in “Empty Promises” and this report, include Algeria, China, Egypt, Morocco, Philippines, Russia (primarily in the case of ethnic Chechens perceived to be involved in terrorism or the armed conflict in Chechnya), Sri Lanka, Syria, Tunisia, Turkey, Uzbekistan, and Yemen. 59 Letter to Human Rights Watch from Hans Dahlgren, State Secretary for Foreign Affairs, Swedish Ministry for Foreign Affairs, September 20, 2004, copy on file with Human Rights Watch. Failing to commence an investigation into credible allegations of torture is itself a violation of article 12 of the Convention against Torture, which reads: “Each state Party shall ensure that its competent authorities proceed to a prompt and impartial investigation, wherever there is reasonable ground to believe that an act of torture has been committed in any territory under its jurisdiction.” 60 The U.S. government “has officially welcomed statements by the Syrian government that Mr. Arar was not tortured.” See Congressional Record, Case of Maher Arar, February 10, 2004, pp. S781-S785 [online] http://www.fas.org/irp/congress/2004_cr/s021004.html (retrieved March 12, 2005). HUMAN RIGHTS WATCH VOL. 17 NO. 4(D) 22