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Merhan Karimi Nasseri on his sofa in Paris airport (taken in 2004)
Photo:
Michel Euler / AP
Tom Hanks resides as Viktor Navorski in an airport terminal due to problems with his passport.
This is what Steven Spielberg's Hollywood film The Terminal is about.
The real star of this story is Merhan Karimi Nasseri.
Because »The Terminal« is loosely based on the tragic life story of the Iranian who lived for 18 years in Charles de Gaulle Airport in Paris.
Now Karimi Nasseri has died.
As the Paris airport authority announced, Karimi Nasseri died after a heart attack in Terminal 2F of the airport.
Police and a medical team could not have saved him, it said.
Karimi Nasseri is said to have been born in 1945.
He lived in Terminal 1 of Paris Airport from 1988 to 2006 because he initially had no residence papers.
According to the French media, he later lived there voluntarily and even refused a new passport from the French authorities.
hba/AP