Iranian exile who lived in Paris airport for 18 years dies
AN IRANIAN refugee who spent 18 years stuck in a Paris airport died yesterday after returning to the terminal, an airport official said.
The extraordinary story of Mehran Karimi Nasseri, known as Sir Alfred, is believed to have inspired a 2004 Steven Spielberg movie starring Tom Hanks.
In The Terminal, Mr Hanks played a man who becomes trapped at New York’s JFK airport when his home country collapses into revolution.
Born in 1945 in Masjed Soleiman, in the Iranian province of Khuzestan, Karimi Nasseri claimed that he was expelled from Iran in 1977 for protests against the Shah’s regime.
When he flew to Europe in November 1988 in an effort to locate his mother, he says he lost his papers.
He had been expelled from every other country he landed in because he was unable to produce the correct paperwork. Caught in a diplomatic limbo, he ended up taking up residence in Terminal One of Paris’s Charles de Gaulle Airport. During that time he became dependent on his unusual place of abode and increasingly a national and international cause celebre, with a small section of airport parquet and plastic bench becoming his domain.
An informal support network grew around him, providing food and medical help along with books and a radio.
In 1999 he was granted refugee status and the right to remain in France.
“I’m not quite sure what I want to do, stay at Roissy or leave,” he said at the time.
“I have papers, I can stay here, I think I should carefully study all the options before making a decision.”
He ended up staying for many more years.
His lawyer Christian Bourguet said at the time: “He no longer wants to leave the airport. “He’s scared of going.”
He finally left the airport in July 2006 when he was hospitalised, and eventually went on to live in a shelter in Paris.
After spending most of the money he received for the film, Karimi Nasseri returned to the same airport that had been his home a few weeks earlier, the airport official said.
He died of natural causes just before midday yesterday in terminal 2F.