Mehran Karimi Nasseri
Iranian refugee who spent 18 years in a French airport
Mehran Karimi Nasseri (Persian: مهران کریمی ناصری, pronounced [mehˈrɒn kæriˈmi nɒseˈri]; 1945 – 12 November 2022), also known as Sir, Alfred Mehran, was an Iranian refugee who lived in the departure lounge of Terminal 1 at Charles de Gaulle Airport from 26 August 1988 until July 2006. Initially stranded due to lack of valid travel documents, he chose to remain at the airport despite being granted residency in Belgium in 1995 and France in 1999.
Nasseri was hospitalized in 2006 due to declining health and lived in various shelters in Paris for the following sixteen years. He returned to live at the Charles de Gaulle Airport in September 2022 and died there of a heart attack two months later. Nasseri's autobiography was published as a book, The Terminal Man in 2004. His life story inspired the 1993 film Lost in Transit and the 2004 film The Terminal.
Early life
Nasseri was born in the Anglo-Persian Oil Company settlement located in Masjed Soleyman, Iran. His father, Abdelkarim, was an Iranian doctor working for the company which allowed Nasseri to grow up relatively affluently. Nasseri has claimed that he was the result of an illegitimate affair, and that his mother was a nurse from Scotland working in the same place but had also claimed a Swedish mother. However, these claims were never substantiated, and it is most likely that Nasseri's mother was an Iranian homemaker.
The public source identifies “Mehran Karimi Nasseri” as iranian refugee who spent 18 years in a French airport. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Mehran, Karimi and Nasseri.
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The strongest evidence will usually combine a dated visual record with documents produced by the authority responsible for the place. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 21, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q357951. VIAF identifies the subject as 93152682585623312607. The Library of Congress control number is nb2005007131. 3 of 5 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1945, 2022, 1988 and 2006.
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This entry incorporates text from “Mehran Karimi Nasseri” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.