Iranian political refugee Mehran Karimi Nasseri died Saturday at Charles de Gaulle airport in Paris. A spokesperson for the airport informed the AFP news agency. Karimi Nasseri, who stayed permanently at the airport between 1988 and 2006, and became world famous after Steven Spielberg made his film The Terminal based on his story, had been living at the airport again for some time. According to the spokesman, he died of a heart attack.
Karimi Nasseri ended up in Paris after traveling to Europe from his native country to look for his mother. Because he did not have the right papers, he had nowhere to stay and he fell into a legal limbo. That was also the reason that he could not leave the airport in Paris until 1999. Then he was granted asylum status in France. According to his lawyer, he did not dare to leave the airport for the following seven years.
At the airport, a network of people took care of Karimi Nasseri. They provided him with food and books, among other things. After Karimi Nasseri gained some fame with his story, Steven Spielberg decided to make a film based on his story. In The Terminal (2004) revolves around a stateless man who is ‘in transit’ at the JFK airport in New York, after a revolution has broken out in his (fictional) homeland.
Correction (November 12, 2022): An earlier version of this article stated in the headline that Karimi Nasseri was imprisoned at the Paris airport for 12 years. Although he was able to leave the airport in 1999, he ended up staying there from 1988 to 2006: eighteen years in total.
Also read this review about Spielberg’s film: The Terminal is Spielberg’s ode to ‘melting pot’