A former horse riding school in the tiny Baltic state of Lithuania was used as a secret CIA prison to hold and interrogate top al-Qaeda terrorists, it has been claimed.

The allegations have sparked a parliamentary inquiry after President Dalia Grybauskaite said she harboured "indirect suspicions" that such a facility existed.

According to unnamed former intelligence operatives quoted by ABC News, the CIA built the secret jail in 2004 and used it for more than a year, flying in at least eight suspected al-Qaeda terrorists from Afghanistan.

The prison was reportedly built from scratch on the territory of a former horse riding school about 15 miles from Vilnius, the Lithuanian capital, and included an underground annex.

Pictures of the building said to be the former CIA jail show a bland-looking two-storey house surrounded by a fence and CCTV cameras. Locals say the building, which is now used as a training facility by Lithuania's state security service, originally had no windows.

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