Mehran Karimi Nasseri, the inspiration behind Steven Spielberg’s The Terminal, has died aged 76. He was an Iranian exile who had been living at Paris-Charles de Gaulle airport from 1988 to 2006, when he was hospitalised. Spielberg had based his 2004 film on The Terminal Man, Nasseri’s autobiography.

Who was Mehran Karimi Nasseri?

Mehran Karimi Nasseri was born in the Iranian province of Masjed Soleiman in a settlement made by the Anglo-Persian Oil Company. Nasseri’s father served as a doctor in the company while his mother worked as a nurse.

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Nasseri went to the United Kingdom in 1973 to study at the University of Bradford. After his return to Iran, Nasseri was exiled from the country in 1977 after he took part in protests against the country’s Shah. He was later granted refugee status by Belgium’s United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees. 

Wanting to settle in the UK in 1986, Nasseri boarded a plane from France, but was returned to the country when UK authorities found him without official documents. Nasseri claimed that his papers had been stolen, but some allege that he lied about the same.

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After this debacle, Nasseri began staying at the Paris-Charles de Gaulle airport. He was allowed to return to Belgium if he agreed to stay under a social worker’s supervision. However, Nasseri refused and claimed that he wanted to go to England as he had originally intended.

In 2006, Nasseri was hospitalised, thus ending his two-decade stay at the airport. He did return to the airport in 2022. A spokesperson for the airport told CNN that Nasseri “returned to live as a homeless person in the public area of the airport since mid-September, after a stay in a nursing home”.

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Regarding Nasseri’s relationship with the airport staff, the spokesperson commented, “whole airport community was attached to him, and our staff looked after him as much as possible during many years, even if we would have preferred him to find a real shelter.”