Two-time defending Olympic bantamweight champion Guillermo Rigondeaux and 2005 welterweight amateur world champion Erislandy Lara left the athletes' village July 22 and failed to appear for their weigh-ins.

They were arrested 11 days later for overstaying their visas and sent back to Cuba.

"We are very concerned that Brazil did not take sufficient steps to ensure that Rigondeaux and Lara were afforded the legal protections they may have been entitled to as potential refugees," New York-based Human Rights Watch said in a letter sent yesterday to Justice Minister Tarso Genro. "We urge you to investigate whether their rights were adequately protected while they were in Brazil."

Calls to the Justice Ministry went unanswered today, but Genro and the federal police have repeatedly said the boxers turned down offers of political asylum.

"The fact that Rigondeaux and Lara defected from an official Cuban athletic delegation strongly suggests that they may have been interested in seeking asylum in Brazil," Human Rights Watch said. "Even if the two athletes did not explicitly request political asylum, claims for refugee status can be signaled through actions, rather than through an explicit request."

Genro has been asked to appear before the Senate's Foreign Relations Committee to explain the arrest and deportation of the boxers.

German boxing promoting agency Arena has said it signed five-year contracts with the fighters and that they applied for visas at the German consulate in Rio de Janeiro.

Officials could not be immediately reached for comment at the consulate, which was closed today.

In Havana, Rigondeaux and Lara told the Communist Party newspaper Granma that they never intended to defect and denied signing with German promoters.

But Arena spokesman Malte Muller-Michaelis told The Associated Press, "They definitely signed contracts, five year contracts, and they received money."