Living in a Terminal Even After Receiving Refugee Status... Returned to Airport Weeks Before Death
Received Large Sum from Film Company but Left Only a Few Million Won
[Asia Economy Reporter Myung-hwan Lee] A man who stayed for 18 years at an international airport terminal in Paris, France, and inspired director Steven Spielberg and the Tom Hanks-starring film "The Terminal," has passed away at the age of 77 at Paris Airport.
According to major foreign media including the AP News, Mehran Karimi Nasseri, originally from Iran, died of natural causes on the 12th (local time) at the second-floor terminal of Paris Charles de Gaulle Airport, an airport official said. His cause of death is reported to be a heart attack.
According to Nasseri, born in 1945 to an Iranian father and a British mother, he was expelled without a passport in the 1970s after participating in anti-monarchy movements in Iran. He applied for political asylum in various European countries but was rejected, and in 1986 he was granted refugee status by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR).
Nasseri, who was living in Belgium, arrived in Paris by train in 1988 to go to the UK where his mother lived, but reportedly lost a bag containing refugee-related documents at the train station. He passed through Paris airport exit inspection without issue and landed at London Heathrow Airport, but was denied entry due to lack of refugee documents and was transferred back to Paris Charles de Gaulle Airport.
The French authorities also tried to deport him, but since he was "stateless," they did not know where to send him and left him at the airport terminal, where he ended up living for 18 years until 2006. However, Iran initially claimed that it never deported him.
He slept on the airport's red plastic chairs and managed his hardships by showering in staff facilities. He usually passed time reading magazines or observing people, and used the nickname "Sir Alfred," given to him by the staff, as his own name. He was granted refugee status by France in 1999 but chose to remain at the airport afterward.
His story also inspired Hollywood director Spielberg and led to the film "The Terminal." The 2004 movie did not directly reflect the true story. The protagonist, played by Tom Hanks, is depicted as staying at New York's John F. Kennedy (JFK) Airport after a coup in his fictional Eastern European home country invalidates his documents, preventing him from entering the United States.
DreamWorks reportedly paid hundreds of thousands of dollars for the film rights. Nasseri left the airport in 2006 with the money he received from the film company but wandered through shelters and hotels in France before returning to the airport a few weeks before his death. It is reported that thousands of euros (approximately several hundred thousand won) were found on Nasseri, who died at the airport.
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