![]() He reportedly refused to sign them, and ended up staying there several more years until he was hospitalized in 2006, and later lived in a Paris shelter. When he finally received refugee papers, he described his surprise, and his insecurity, about leaving the airport. He ended up at Charles de Gaulle in August 1988 and stayed.įurther bureaucratic bungling and increasingly strict European immigration laws kept him in a legal no-man's land for years. The UNHCR in Belgium gave him refugee credentials, but he said his briefcase containing the refugee certificate was stolen in a Paris train station.įrench police later arrested him, but couldn't deport him anywhere because he had no official documents. He applied for political asylum in several countries in Europe. When he returned, he said, he was imprisoned for protesting against the shah and expelled without a passport. He left Iran to study in England in 1974. Nasseri was born in 1945 in Soleiman, a part of Iran then under British jurisdiction, to an Iranian father and a British mother. Immigration laws and bureaucracy left him in a legal limbo "But I am still waiting for a passport or transit visa." ![]() "Eventually, I will leave the airport," he told The Associated Press in 1999, smoking a pipe on his bench, looking frail with long thin hair, sunken eyes and hollow cheeks. Staff nicknamed him Lord Alfred, and he became a mini-celebrity among passengers. Year in and year out, he slept on a red plastic bench, making friends with airport workers, showering in staff facilities, writing in his diary, reading magazines and surveying passing travelers. Nasseri lived in the airport's Terminal 1 from 1988 until 2006, first in legal limbo because he lacked residency papers and later by apparent choice. The official was not authorized to be publicly named. Police and a medical team treated him but were not able to save him, the official said. Merhan Karimi Nasseri died after a heart attack in the airport's Terminal 2F around midday, according an official with the Paris airport authority. PARIS - An Iranian man who lived for 18 years in Paris' Charles de Gaulle Airport and whose saga loosely inspired the Steven Spielberg film "The Terminal" died Saturday in the airport that he long called home, officials said. He died Saturday in the airport, officials said. Merhan Karimi Nasseri lived for 18 years in Paris' Charles de Gaulle Airport and inspired the Steven Spielberg film The Terminal.
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