An Iranian man who was stuck in a Paris airport for 18 years, inspiring a Steven Spielberg film starring Tom Hanks, died on Saturday at the terminal, according to an airport official.
Mehran Karimi Nasseri died of natural causes shortly before midday on Saturday at Charles de Gaulle airport outside Paris.
Initially caught in an immigration trap, unable to enter France and with nowhere to go, he became reliant on his unusual residence and became a national and international cause celebre.
Sir Alfred, he called himself, and a small section of airport parquet and a plastic bench became his domain.
Karimi Nasseri’s peculiar story came to the attention of Hollywood director Spielberg, inspiring 2004 film ‘The Terminal,’ which starred Hanks and Catherine Zeta-Jones.
When his home country collapses into revolution, Hanks plays a man who becomes trapped at New York’s JFK airport.
According to the official, Karimi Nasseri returned to the airport a few weeks ago after spending the majority of the money he had received for the film.
He had several thousand euros (dollars) on him.
Born in 1945 in Masjed Soleiman, in the Iranian province of Khuzestan, Karimi Nasseri, took up residence in the airport in November 1988 after flying from Iran to London, Berlin and Amsterdam in an effort to locate his mother.
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