Euro-MPs visit alleged CIA 'black site' in Lithuania

(VILNIUS) - A European Parliament delegation on Thursday visited a purported CIA "black site" in Lithuania, amid a probe into allegations the Baltic state hosted a secret US jail for Al-Qaeda suspects.

EU lawmakers took a 90-minute private tour of a two-storey building close to the capital Vilnius where it is alleged the secret jail was located, on the second day of a three-day visit.

Perched on the edge of a forest, the facility -- a former equestrian complex -- is currently being used as a training centre for the Lithuanian State Security Department.

"Not to our surprise, we have just checked on the spot that the whole thing has been re-arranged," former Spanish justice minister Juan Fernando Lopez Aguilar, the delegation leader, told journalists.

Earlier Thursday, EU lawmakers met advisors to Lithuanian President Dalia Grybauskaite and the Baltic state's justice minister.

"Lithuania has been one the most open countries and politically did everything it could" to facilitate the EU parliamentary probe and its own internal investigation of the allegations, said Grybauskaite.

Justice Minister Remigijus Simasius told AFP the investigation "has been limited by the policy of our US partners not to disclose any information".

In December 2009, a Lithuanian parliamentary probe identified two alleged CIA "black sites" which US media reports said were used in 2003-2006.

But it noted that despite records showing two CIA-linked flights landed in Vilnius in 2003 and 2005, and three in Palanga, western Lithuania, in 2005 and 2006, it was impossible to say whether detainees had been brought in.

Lithuanian prosecutors opened a separate investigation, but dropped it last year saying there was no evidence of illegal detention in Lithuania, which joined NATO and the European Union in 2004.