Exiled Iranian man who inspired Spielberg’s ‘The Terminal’ dies at Paris airport
Mehran Karimi Nasseri, the Iranian exile whose time spent at Paris' Charles de Gaulle airport inspired filmmaker Steven Spielberg's movie 'The Terminal', on Saturday, died of a heart attack in Terminal 2F of the same airport. It was in 1988 that Mehran first settled at the airport after the United Kingdom denied him political asylum as a refugee despite the fact that he had a Scottish mother.
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FollowThe Iranian exile Mehran Karimi Nasseri, whose time spent at Paris' Charles de Gaulle airport served as the inspiration for director Steven Spielberg's film "The Terminal," passed away on Saturday from a heart attack at Terminal 2F of the same airport, according to Variety. The report claims that Mehran, who also went by the moniker Sir Alfred, had just resumed residing in the airport. He resided in Charles de Gaulle Airport's Terminal 1.
Mehran originally made a home at the airport in 1988 after the UK denied him political asylum as a refugee despite the fact that his mother was Scottish. From 1988 through 2006, Nasseri resided in Terminal 1 of the airport, initially out of the law since he lacked residency documents and then by apparent choice.
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Media report claims that he opted to live at the airport on purpose after claiming to be stateless and that he always kept his bags close at hand. 18 years after initially staying there, Mehran left the airport for the first time when he was hospitalised in 2006, according to Variety. He used to spend his time reading, journaling, and studying economics.
Nasseri was born in 1945 to an Iranian father and a British mother in Soleiman, a region of Iran that was then governed by the British. In 1974, he left Iran to attend college in England. He said that upon his return, he was deported without a passport and imprisoned for participating in anti-Shah demonstrations.
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He submitted applications for political asylum in many European nations. He received refugee credentials from the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees in Belgium, but he claimed his briefcase, which included the refugee certificate, was stolen at a Paris railway station.
Based on his unusual circumstance, Spielberg made the 2004 movie "The Terminal." Tom Hanks played an Eastern European guy who lives in the John F. Kennedy airport in New York after being refused admission to the US. Apart from that, Mehran, who was the focus of various documentaries and journalistic profiles, served as inspiration for the 1993 French film "Tombes du ciel," starring Jean Rochefort. He was reportedly born in the Iranian city of Masjed Soleiman in 1945, and his autobiography, titled "The Terminal Man," was released in 2004.
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