Sat Mar 23, 2024 11:33 pm by globalturbo
Iranian who inspired 'The Terminal' dies at Paris airport
FILE - Merhan Karimi Nasseri sits among his belongings at Terminal 1 of Roissy Charles De Gaulle Airport, north of Paris on Aug. 11, 2004 . An Iranian man who lived for 18 years in Paris' Charles de Gaulle Airport and inspired the Steven Spielberg film "The Terminal" died Saturday, Nov. 12, 2022 in the airport, officials 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. Police and then a medical team treated him but were not able to save him, the official said. (AP Photo/Michel Euler, File)
ASSOCIATED PRESS
JEFFREY SCHAEFFER
Sat, November 12, 2022 at 12:47 PM·3 min read
In this article
PARIS (AP) — 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.
Mehran Karimi Nasseri died after a heart attack in the airport’s Terminal 2F around midday, according an official with the Paris airport authority. Police and a medical team treated him but were not able to save him, the official said. The official was not authorized to be publicly named.
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.
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.
Staff nicknamed him Lord Alfred, and he became a mini-celebrity among passengers.
“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. “But I am still waiting for a passport or transit visa.”
Nasseri was born in 1945 in Soleiman, a part of Iran then under British jurisdiction, to an Iranian father and a British mother. He left Iran to study in England in 1974. When he returned, he said, he was imprisoned for protesting against the shah and expelled without a passport.
He applied for political asylum in several countries in Europe. The UNHCR in Belgium gave him refugee credentials, but he said his briefcase containing the refugee certificate was stolen in a Paris train station.
French police later arrested him, but couldn't deport him anywhere because he had no official documents. He ended up at Charles de Gaulle in August 1988 and stayed.
Further bureaucratic bungling and increasingly strict European immigration laws kept him in a legal no-man's land for years.
Thanks to: https://news.yahoo.com/iranian-inspired-terminal-dies-paris-184714310.html?guccounter=1
France Airport Death
FILE - Merhan Karimi Nasseri sits among his belongings at Terminal 1 of Roissy Charles De Gaulle Airport, north of Paris on Aug. 11, 2004 . An Iranian man who lived for 18 years in Paris' Charles de Gaulle Airport and inspired the Steven Spielberg film "The Terminal" died Saturday, Nov. 12, 2022 in the airport, officials 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. Police and then a medical team treated him but were not able to save him, the official said. (AP Photo/Michel Euler, File)
ASSOCIATED PRESS
JEFFREY SCHAEFFER
Sat, November 12, 2022 at 12:47 PM·3 min read
In this article
- Mehran Karimi Nasseri
Iranian refugee
PARIS (AP) — 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.
Mehran Karimi Nasseri died after a heart attack in the airport’s Terminal 2F around midday, according an official with the Paris airport authority. Police and a medical team treated him but were not able to save him, the official said. The official was not authorized to be publicly named.
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.
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.
Staff nicknamed him Lord Alfred, and he became a mini-celebrity among passengers.
“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. “But I am still waiting for a passport or transit visa.”
Nasseri was born in 1945 in Soleiman, a part of Iran then under British jurisdiction, to an Iranian father and a British mother. He left Iran to study in England in 1974. When he returned, he said, he was imprisoned for protesting against the shah and expelled without a passport.
He applied for political asylum in several countries in Europe. The UNHCR in Belgium gave him refugee credentials, but he said his briefcase containing the refugee certificate was stolen in a Paris train station.
French police later arrested him, but couldn't deport him anywhere because he had no official documents. He ended up at Charles de Gaulle in August 1988 and stayed.
Further bureaucratic bungling and increasingly strict European immigration laws kept him in a legal no-man's land for years.
Thanks to: https://news.yahoo.com/iranian-inspired-terminal-dies-paris-184714310.html?guccounter=1
