THE illegal practice of forcibly returning refugees across borders, known as pushback, continued unabated in Greece last year, an independent human rights organisation says in a report published today.

The report, by Mare Liberum, a charity that monitors the Greek coastguard’s treatment of refugees in the Aegean Sea, contains testimonies from some of those who say they were beaten, tortured and abused by Greek coastguard personnel and others who were forced onto life rafts and abandoned at sea.

“They strip-searched us naked in the forest…,” one of the testimonies says.