US academic, Dean S. Kevlin, resigned Saturday and was soon to head back home, a day after raising concerns by disappearing for 24 hours and then being found drunk in an off-campus apartment in Beirut, reported AFP, quoting a statement as saying.
"The resignation of Dean Kevlin as dean of student affairs has been accepted," said a statement by John Waterbury, president of the American University of Beirut (AUB).
"Dr. Kevlin will soon return to the United States to be with his family," said the statement.
On Friday, the university had reported that Kevlin, 51, had been missing under mysterious circumstances since Thursday, provoking tension in the country and alarming US officials, said press reports.
A senior security source close to the investigation told AFP on Saturday that Kevlin had finally been located Friday evening "inebriated and sleeping naked in an apartment in Hamra," a commercial district only a few hundred meters from the AUB campus.
The source said Kevlin, who resides on the AUB campus, had "rented the apartment on Hamra under the name of a male friend because, as a US citizen, he has to reside on-campus."
The Lebanese Daily Star newspaper quoted an official as saying Saturday that at 6:30 p.m. on Thursday, Kevlin "called his assistant, Nathan Clayton, to say that he was returning to his campus office after having been called to the emergency room of 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, the official added.
Until he surfaced Friday night, there had been no communication from Kevlin, a naturalized American citizen (he was born in Middlesex, England) who came to AUB in the fall of 1999.
His cell phone was turned off throughout the day, said the paper.
While the university, police, and embassy officials scrambled to locate the "missing" dean, the investigation and ensuing news reports fueled speculation that he might have been kidnapped, said the paper.
In the 1980s, several Americans working at the AUB were kidnapped, including president David Dodge, who was released after a year of captivity.
Dodge's successor, Malcolm Kerr, was kidnapped also and then assassinated on campus in 1984 -- Albawaba.com
© 2001 Al Bawaba (www.albawaba.com)
