BRUSSELS, March 9 (Xinhuanet) -- At least two secret Central Intelligence Agency flights have passed through Belgium, local newspaper Le Soir reported on Thursday amid growing concerns that the U.S. may have clandestinely set up detention facilities in European countries to imprison terrorist suspects.

    The report in the French-language daily cited information from a senior federal public servant.

    According to the paper, the first flight took place on July 7, 2002, via Deurne Airport in Antwerp, and the second CIA flight passed through the same site three days later.

    The plane was a Gulf stream III, which has been used on other occasions by the CIA to transport terror suspects, Le Soir reported.

    Although it could not produce a lease contract for the aircraft or determine the nature of the mission, the paper stressed that the plane was involved in secret activities of the U.S. intelligence service.

    Following a Washington Post report in November that the CIA used camps in East European countries to interrogate terrorist suspects, the New York-based Human Rights Watch named Romania and Poland as possible hosts of U.S. prisons.

    Both Romania and Poland have denied the claims.

    Washington has neither confirmed nor denied the allegations that the prisons existed in Europe but has denied using or condoning torture.

    The Council of Europe (CoE) issued an interim report in January, saying that European governments had silently condoned the practice of abducting suspected terrorists and transporting them from European airports to countries in which torture is used.

    A report by the news agency Belga said this week that the Belgian intelligence services had conducted only cursory investigations into whether secret CIA flights carrying terror suspects had ever passed through Belgium.

    The report indicated that Belgium's intelligence services had barely bothered to conduct investigations because they had never been officially commissioned.

    The lack of inquiries comes despite explicit requests from the CoE for member states to investigate claims of secret CIA flights.

    However, the Belgian government is adamant that it did ask the security services to investigate the matter.

    The Belgian government informed the CoE in late February that, with current knowledge, no CIA flights traveled via Belgium. Enditem