NEW YORK — U.S. aviation records appear to corroborate the account of a Canadian who says U.S. officials flew him out of the country on an executive jet after grabbing him as he changed planes in New York, the New York Times reported Wednesday.

Maher Arar, 35, a Syrian-born Canadian telecommunications engineer who lives in Ottawa, said he was detained at New York's John F. Kennedy International Airport, where he made a stop on his way home to Canada after a vacation in Tunisia in 2002.

He was held for about two weeks, then put on a small jet in New Jersey to be flown out, he said. U.S. officials suspected him of having connections with al-Qaida but he has consistently denied any link with the terrorist group.

After a year in confinement in Syria, Arar was released without any charges in October 2003. His complaints of brutality and torture while in Syrian custody have been the subject of a yearlong inquiry in Canada, but U.S. authorities have refused to participate. Arar has launched a lawsuit against the U.S. government.

The Times said the flight records it examined show that a Gulfstream III jet, tail number N829MG, followed a flight path matching the route Arar described.

The flight took place on Oct. 8, 2002, the day after Arar's deportation order was signed.

Chained on the leather seat of an executive jet as his American guards watched movies and ignored his protests, Arar says he followed the plane's movements on a map displayed on a video screen. It indicated the plane travelled to Dulles Airport, outside Washington, to a Maine airport Arar believed was in Portland, to Rome, and finally to Amman, Jordan, where he was blindfolded and driven to Syria, the Times reported.

The only conflict the newspaper found in the records was that the Maine airport was Bangor, not Portland. The logs only give details on flights departing from the United States, so the trip was only documented as far as Rome.

Records of that same jet's travels also show a trip in December 2003 to Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, where the United States holds hundreds of detainees, suggesting that it was used by the government on at least one other occasion, the newspaper said.

The charter company that operates the jet, Presidential Aviation, of Fort Lauderdale, Florida, wouldn't divulge who rented the plane that day.

"It's a very select group of people that we fly, from entertainers to foreign heads of state, a whole gamut of customers that we fly and wouldn't discuss one over the other," said Nigel England, the company's director of operations.

Maria LaHood, one of the lawyers for Arar, said the flight records lent support to her client's lawsuit against the U.S. government.

"The facts we got from Maher right after he was released are now corroborated by public records," said LaHood, who works for the Center for Constitutional Rights, a group in New York that advocates investigation of human rights abuses.

"The more information that comes out, the better for showing that this is an important public issue that can't be kept secret."

LaHood said Arar believes American officials wanted him to undergo a more brutal interrogation than would be permitted in the United States.

Other U.S. newspapers, including the Washington Post and the Chicago Tribune, have reported on three other planes believed to have been used for transporting suspected terrorists.

In court filings responding to Arar's lawsuit in New York, U.S. Justice Department lawyers say Arar was deported to Syria based on secret information that he was a member of al-Qaida, an accusation he denies, the Times reported.

However, the lawyers said it was not a case of rendition, in which suspects are sent abroad for interrogation.

Arar's is among a number of cases since the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks in which suspects have accused the United States of secretly delivering them to other countries for interrogation under torture.

Charles Miller, a Justice Department spokesman, said the government had no comment on the case. The administration has asked a judge to dismiss most of Arar's lawsuit, saying it would reveal classified information.