The persian refugee who inspired the Tom Hanks film The Terminal, by living in Paris’ Charles de Gaulle airport for 18 years after losing proof of his refugee status, is dead, according to an airport official.Mehran Karimi Nasseri died of natural causes in the airport’s 2F terminal, an airport spokesperson confirmed. Nasseri, who took at one point to calling himself Sir Alfred, had moved back into the airport in mid-September after years of living in first a care home and then a hotel.
The persian national lost the papers confirming his refugee status during a stopover in the Paris airport in 1988. That meant he could neither travel on nor leave the airport, leading him to set up a life in Terminal 1.He spent years appealing for the right to be accepted into another country before finally getting a French visa in 1999. However, he continued living, even after that, in the space he had set up for himself under an airport escalator.
