By JEFFREY SCHAEFFER

PARIS — An Iranian man who lived for 18 years in Paris’ Charles de Gaulle Airport and whose saga loosely impressed the Steven Spielberg movie “The Terminal” died Saturday within the airport that he lengthy referred to as dwelling, officers stated.

Mehran Karimi Nasseri died after a coronary heart assault within the airport’s Terminal 2F round noon, in accordance an official with the Paris airport authority. Police and a medical crew handled him however weren’t capable of save him, the official stated. The official was not licensed to be publicly named.

Nasseri lived within the airport’s Terminal 1 from 1988 till 2006, first in authorized limbo as a result of he lacked residency papers and later by obvious alternative.

12 months in and yr out, he slept on a crimson plastic bench, making buddies with airport staff, showering in workers services, writing in his diary, studying magazines and surveying passing vacationers.

Employees nicknamed him Lord Alfred, and he grew to become a mini-celebrity amongst passengers.

“Ultimately, I’ll depart the airport,” he instructed The Related Press in 1999, smoking a pipe on his bench, trying frail with lengthy skinny hair, sunken eyes and hole cheeks. “However I’m nonetheless ready for a passport or transit visa.”

Nasseri was born in 1945 in Soleiman, part of Iran then below British jurisdiction, to an Iranian father and a British mom. He left Iran to check in England in 1974. When he returned, he stated, he was imprisoned for protesting in opposition to the shah and expelled and not using a passport.

He utilized for political asylum in a number of international locations in Europe. The UNHCR in Belgium gave him refugee credentials, however he stated his briefcase containing the refugee certificates was stolen in a Paris practice station.

French police later arrested him, however couldn’t deport him wherever as a result of he had no official paperwork. He ended up at Charles de Gaulle in August 1988 and stayed.

Additional bureaucratic bungling and more and more strict European immigration legal guidelines stored him in a authorized no-man’s land for years.

When he lastly acquired refugee papers, he described his shock, and his insecurity, about leaving the airport. He reportedly refused to signal them, and ended up staying there a number of extra years till he was hospitalized in 2006, and later lived in a Paris shelter.

Those that befriended him within the airport stated the years of residing within the windowless area took a toll on his psychological state. The airport physician within the Nineteen Nineties fearful about his bodily and psychological well being, and described him as “fossilized right here.” A ticket agent buddy in contrast him to a prisoner incapable of “residing on the skin.”

Within the weeks earlier than his dying, Nasseri had been once more residing at Charles de Gaulle, the airport official stated.