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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 Nasseri is dead.
As the Paris airport authority announced, Nasseri died after a heart attack in Terminal 2F of the airport.
Police and a medical team could not have saved him, it said.
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.
He is even said to have refused a new passport from the French authorities.
Sleeping on a plastic bench
For years he slept on a red plastic bench and made friends with airport workers.
He used the staff showers, wrote a journal, read newspapers, and observed travelers passing by.
The staff nicknamed him "Lord Alfred."
In 2006, Nasseri was hospitalized and then lived in Paris accommodation.
He was back at the airport in the weeks leading up to his death, an airport authority official said.
hba/AP