Man who lived in airport for 18 years dies of heart attack

PARIS: Iranian man Mehran Karimi Nasseri, who lived at an airport and inspired filmmaker Steven Spielberg's movie 'The Terminal', on Saturday, died of a heart attack in the terminal of the same airport.

Mehran first settled at the airport in 1988 after the United Kingdom denied him political asylum as a refugee despite the fact that he had a Scottish mother.

Mehran had to leave the airport when he was hospitalized in 2006, 18 years after first settling there. He used to spend time reading, writing diary entries and studying economics.

Spielberg decided to make the 2004 film 'The Terminal' based on his unconventional situation. It starred Tom Hanks as an Eastern European man who resides in New York's John F. Kennedy airport after being denied entry to the United States.
Apart from this, the 1993 French film 'Tombes du ciel,' starring Jean Rochefort, was also inspired by Mehran, who was the subject of numerous documentaries and journalistic profiles.

As per Variety, he was believed to have been born in 1945 in the Iranian city of Masjed Soleiman and his autobiography titled 'The Terminal Man' was published in 2004.