the fact that the practice of reliance upon diplomatic assurances threatens the international ban on torture, including the nonrefoulement obligation. Moreover, there is credible, and in some instances overwhelming, evidence that the assurances were breached. A confidential government memorandum detailing the first visit by Swedish diplomats with Agiza and al-Zari included information from the men that they had been brutalized by the Swedish police, blindfolded during interrogations in Cairo, placed in very small cells, denied necessary medication, beaten by prison guards on the way to and from interrogations, and threatened by interrogators with repression against family members if a confession was not forthcoming.178 This passage was omitted from the censored version of the monitoring report that the government made available to the public, but the men’s lawyers eventually were able to access the uncensored version.179 Agiza and al-Zari have made serious allegations of torture, including electric shock, to family members and their Egyptian and Swedish lawyers.180 In a December 2004 radio interview, Carl Henrik Ehrenkrona, chief legal adviser to the Swedish Ministry of Foreign Affairs, claimed that one reason for not communicating the men’s torture allegations to the Egyptian authorities was to protect them from the Egyptian police (see text box.)181 The Swedish authorities claim that they have made twenty-five visits to the men.182 They fail to note: that no visit was made until five weeks after the men were returned, during which time the men were held incommunicado; that no prison visits were conducted in private; and that advance notification to the prison authorities was required. The authorities also fail to acknowledge that the men have claimed that they were threatened with retribution if they complained about mistreatment. The inherent weaknesses of monitoring under such conditions are apparent (see Limits of Post-Return Monitoring section above). Unfair Trial Despite Assurances The assurances of fair trial were likewise violated. In April 2004, Ahmed Agiza, convicted in absentia in Egypt in 1999, was retried in a military court, despite the fact that internationally-recognized procedural guarantees are significantly abridged in such 178 Copy of memorandum on file with Human Rights Watch. 179 Human Rights Watch did not obtain the memo from the men’s lawyers. 180 Human Rights Center for the Assistance of Prisoners (Cairo), “Governmental Deportation: Egyptian Nationals as Islamic Activists,” April 1, 2003, p. 6. See also Swedish NGO Foundation for Human Rights and Swedish Helsinki Committee for Human Rights, “Alternative Report to ‘Comments by the Government of Sweden on the Concluding Observations of the Human Rights Committee’,” op. cit., fn 56, p. 25, para. 101. 181 Sveriges (Swedish) Radio, Ekot Programme, December 10, 2004, copy of transcript on file with Human Rights Watch. See text box on p. 64. 182 Freivalds Speech, December 1, 2004. HUMAN RIGHTS WATCH VOL. 17 NO. 4(D) 60