An Iranian man who lived for 18 years at Charles de Gaulle airport in Paris died on Saturday (12/11) local time. Mehran Karimi Nasseri (76) died after suffering a heart attack in the airport’s Terminal 2F at noon, according to authorities, reported by Al Jazeera.
Nasseri managed to get help from the police and the medical team. However, his life could not be saved.
The story of Mehran Karimi Nasseri, an Iranian man who lived 18 years in a French airport
Nasseri lived in the airport’s Terminal 1 from 1988 to 2006. According to Al Jazeera, this started with legal uncertainty because he did not have a residence permit.
He sleeps on a red plastic stool surrounded by boxes of newspapers and magazines. He showered and cleaned himself up using facilities owned by airport staff.
Every day, the man nicknamed Lord Alfred wrote in his diary, read magazines, studied economics and watched the travelers go by. Nasseri has become an iconic character at Charles de Gaulle airport in Paris.
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Mehran Karimi Nasseri, an Iranian man who lived 18 years at a French airport/ Photo: Corbis via Getty Images/Eric Fougere
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“I’m finally leaving the airport,” he told me The Associated Press in 1999. “But I’m still waiting for a passport or a transit visa.”
Nasseri was born in 1945 in Soleiman, a part of Iran then under British jurisdiction. His father is from Iran while his mother is from England. Nasseri went to England in 1974 with the aim of studying.
Upon his return, Nasseri admitted he was jailed for protesting shah and issued without a passport.
He applied for political asylum in several European countries, including the United Kingdom, but was refused. Eventually, the UN refugee agency in Belgium gave him refugee credentials, but he says his briefcase containing refugee certificates was stolen at a Paris train station.
French police later arrested him, but were unable to deport him anywhere as he had no official papers. He ended up in Charles de Gaulle in August 1988, where he finally decided to stay and settle down.
