The following appeared in Chuck Shepherd’s “News of the Weird” feature. Can this really be? Fill me in, please! –Suzette, via the Internet
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On first reading this I was as incredulous as the next guy. So I sent my henchman Mike Lenehan to the Paris airport to check things out firsthand. (No big deal, he was in the neighborhood.) His report boiled down to: (1) Yup, he’s really there. (2) No, I can’t explain it. At TSD we’ve got a handle on nearly everything, but some things stump even us.
Nasseri is in the kind of jam for which the term Kafkaesque was invented. In 1977 he was expelled from his native Iran for antigovernment activity. After bouncing around Europe seeking political asylum, he was finally granted refugee status by Belgium in 1981. Later he decided to head for England–he’d done some postgraduate work there, his mother was British, and apparently he figured he had some claim to British citizenship. Unfortunately, in 1988, when he tried to put this plan into action, his papers were stolen from him at a train station in France. He flew to London anyway but, lacking a passport, was sent back to France by British authorities. French police arrested him, but there was no place to deport him to. He’s been at Charles de Gaulle Airport ever since. A French court ruled that he can’t be expelled from the airport, and some think Nasseri, now in his mid-50s, will be there the rest of his life.
Last month Belgian officials reinstated Nasseri’s refugee status. Although nothing is certain, he may yet get to England. He seems unsettled by the prospect. My feeling is, cheezit, folks, get him out of there. Get him a nice little flat in London. And promise him he can bring that red plastic seat.
