![]() In 1999, Nasseri was presented with an international travel card and a French residency permit.He was only interested in living in Britain. In 1995, the Belgian government finally told Nasseri that he could retrieve his refugee documents if he agreed to live in Belgium.However, the Belgian government refused to allow Nasseri to return to Belgium. They argued that Nasseri had to present himself in person. But Belgian officials refused to mail them to France. He focused on Belgium, where he hoped to reclaim Nasseri’s original refugee documents. Human rights lawyer Christian Bourget began a ten-year battle to rescue Nasseri. ![]() He spent his time reading, writing in a diary, and sleeping on a bench surrounded by his luggage and all of his possessions. He received regular visits from a local doctor and a priest. Airport employees, pilots, and stewardesses took pity on him and brought him meal vouchers and reading material. He took up residence in Terminal 1, where he made a nook for himself.In 1988, he began his 18-year sojourn in Charles De Gaulle Airport.French authorities refused to give Nasseri either a refugee visa or a transit visa. But because Nasseri had no documents, there was no country of origin to deport him to. At first, the French police arrested him for illegal entry and wanted to deport him. But when officials at Heathrow Airport found he had no passport, they sent him back to Charles de Gaulle Airport in France. Nasseri boarded a plane for London anyway. He was on his way there in 1988 when his briefcase containing all of his documentary papers and passports was stolen from a train station. Then he decided he wanted to go to England to search for relatives of his mother.In 1981, his request for political asylum from Iran was finally granted by the United Nations High Commission for Refugees in Belgium. He went to Europe and bounced from one country to another, applying for refugee status for the next four years.He was expelled from the country in 1977. Then he returned to Iran, where he got into trouble for protesting against the Shah. In 1973, Nasseri went to Britain where he spent three years studying at the University of Bradford. His father was an Iranian doctor and his mother was a Scottish nurse working at the same hospital. Mehran Karimi Nasseri was born in 1942 in Iran.
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