Mehran Karimi Nasseri, an Iranian political refugee who spent more than 18 years at Paris’ Roissy-Charles de Gaulle airport, died on Saturday, French news agency AFP learned from an airport source.
Mehran Karimi Nasseri, also known as ‘Sir Alfred’, was born in 1945. He began living at Roissy Charles de Gaulle airport, north of Paris, in November 1988 after a series of wanderings through London, Berlin and Amsterdam at the search for the mother. Each time he was removed by the authorities because he could not produce any documents. In 1999 he was granted refugee status and a residence permit in France.
It became a symbol at the airport and became the subject of numerous radio and television reports, both in France and abroad. In 2004, his story was filmed by director Steven Spielberg in “The Terminal”. Tom Hanks played the role of Nasseri.
After the film, the man would end up in a shelter in France. He reportedly spent most of the money he received on the film and was back at the airport several weeks ago. There, in Terminal 2F, he died just before noon on Saturday. Mehran Karimi Nasseri died of natural causes. He still had several thousand euros in his pocket.
