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Missing U.S. Academic Found Drunk And Alive At Friend's Apartment
BEIRUT, Feb 2 (News Agencies) - A dean of the American University of Beirut (AUB) who went missing under mysterious circumstances Thursday was found with a friend at an apartment near the campus some 24 hours later, a senior Lebanese police official said.
The university had reported Friday that its dean of student affairs, Dean S. Kevlin, was missing.
While the circumstances surrounding his disappearance were confusing, a source close to the investigation later said Kevlin had told friends he might go away for a long weekend.
An AUB statement said Kevlin, 51, called his assistant Thursday at 6:30 pm (1630 GMT) "to say that he was returning to his campus office after having been called to the emergency room at the American University Hospital to check on a student who was being admitted."
But "hospital records show that no student was examined or admitted at that time. There was no further communication from Dean Kevlin up to the present time. He did not return to his office nor to his apartment. He has not been admitted to any hospital," a university statement said Friday afternoon.
After locating Kevlin, the Lebanese police official said "we found him, drunk, with a friend in an apartment in Hamra," which is in a commercial district only a few hundred meters (yards) from the AUB campus, and that he would be questioned by police.
An AUB professor said Kevlin was taken to the residence of the university's president, John Waterbury.
The source close to the investigation said police thought Kevlin had disappeared for "personal reasons" because he had hinted he might take a long weekend.
The university statement, attributed to Waterbury, said, "All of us at AUB are deeply disturbed by Dean Kevlin's unexplained disappearance."
At one point, the official Lebanese news agency ANI, quoting Lebanese security services, said Kevlin had been "lured off campus by a student."
The U.S. embassy in Beirut "shares AUB's concern," but "it's premature to make any further comment," said embassy spokeswoman Anne O'Leary.
Kevlin arrived in Lebanon in October 1999. He is married with two children, and his family is still in New York.
A former director of enrollment and student services at New York University, Kevlin holds a Ph.D. from Oxford University. He also serves as director of education and programming at the American Institute of Chemical Engineers in New York.
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