Mehran Karimi Nasseri who lived in Paris airport for 18 years dies

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The 77-year-old Iranian refugee Mehran Karimi Nasseri, whose ordeal inspired the 2004 movie “The Terminal” starring Tom Hanks and Catherine Zeta-Jones died on 13 November 2022, inside the Paris Charles de Gaulle Airport, where he had previously lived for 18 years.

Mehran Karimi Nasseri died around noon local time of a heart attack, a spokesperson for the Paris airport authority said on 14 November 2022.IR

Nasseri was born in 1945 in the Iranian province of Khuzestan. He left Iran in 1970’s to search for his British mothers. He was expelled from many European countries including the United Kingdom, the Netherlands and Germany for not having the correct immigration documents. 

In 1988, French authorities stopped him at the Paris airport as he tried to pass through without identity papers. Caught in an immigration trap, he soon set up a makeshift home of his own in the airport and lived for many years in Terminal 1 of Paris’s Charles de Gaulle Airport. 

He was offered a residence permit by France but was unable to adjust to life outside the airport. He eventually came back to the Airport’s Terminal 2F and died later.