BRUSSELS, April 26 (Xinhua) -- The United States' Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) had run more than 1,000 secret flights in and out of Europe since 2001, an interim report by the European Parliament probe team said Wednesday.

    The European parliament inquiry into allegations of "extraordinary rendition" charges the US agency with kidnapping terror suspects.

    "The CIA has, on several occasions, clearly been responsible for kidnapping and illegally detaining alleged terrorists on the territory of member states, as well as for extraordinary renditions," Italian MEP Giovanni Fava said in his interim report on Wednesday.

    The rapporteur made specific reference to several alleged abductions, including the kidnap of Egyptian cleric Abu Omar in Milan in 2003.

    Italian authorities were highly likely to have known the details of Abu Omar's case, he declared.

    "It is difficult to imagine the authorities in the member states where this was going on, were not informed. But we are in the early stages and are gathering facts. We are not condemning anyone at this juncture," Fava added.

    Investigators used data from Euro control, the EU's air safety agency, to examine records of thousands of flights.

    He said the air safety regulators revealed flights with irregular flight paths heading to and from European airports from 2001.

    Among those highlighted was the flight transferring Khalid al-Masri, a Kuwaiti-born German national, who was seized in Macedonia and transported to Afghanistan in 2004.

    That plane flew from Algeria to Majorca, Spain, then to Skopje, Macedonia, and onto Kabul via Baghdad, all within 48 hours.

    "They are rather strange routes for flights to take. It is hard to imagine...those stopovers were simply for providing fuel," the Italian socialist told reporters.

    Italy, Sweden and Bosnia were singled out as for knowing more than they have made public about the flights.

    So far the committee has not reported back on allegations of secret prisons, but members will be visiting Romania and Poland for further investigations later this year. Enditem