Mo Farah, the first British track and field athlete to win four Olympic gold medals, has revealed he was trafficked into the UK three decades ago as a child under a false name.
The stunning revelation significantly rewrote the life story of Farah, one of Britain’s most famous athletes. It also raised questions about his citizenship status in a country where immigration battles have become a polarizing issue in domestic politics in recent years.
“Most people know me as Mo Farah, but that’s not my name or the reality,” he said in a BBC documentary due to be released on Wednesday.
“The real story is that I was born in Somaliland, north of Somalia, as Hussein Abdi Kahin. Despite what I’ve said in the past, my parents never lived in the UK,” Farah said in clips from the documentary, which were released on Monday.
Farah, 39, previously said he had arrived in Britain with his parents as a refugee.
He said he was putting his citizenship at risk by sharing his story, but the British government was quick to signal that he had nothing to fear. A Home Office spokesman said in a statement on Tuesday that no action would be taken against Farah and “to suggest otherwise is wrong”.
Under government guidelines, children are not complicit in fraud or misrepresentation committed by their parent or guardian.
A lawyer who spoke to Farah in the documentary, Alan Briddock, said Farah is unlikely to lose his citizenship because he was trafficked as a child and shared his story with the appropriate authorities.
In the documentary, Farah said he was separated from his family after his father was killed during Somalia’s civil war. He was brought to Britain aged 9 with a woman under the name of another child, Mohammed Farah. He thought he would stay with relatives, but he was forced to serve.
“I had all my relative’s contact details and as soon as we got to her house my lady took them off and right in front of me tore them up and put them in the bin and that’s when I knew I was in trouble,” he said.
“If I wanted food in my mouth, it was my job to take care of those kids, bathe them, cook for them, clean for them,” Farah said. “And she said, ‘If you ever want to see your family again, don’t say anything. If you say anything, they will take you away.
Years later, when enrolled in school, Farah tells his gym teacher Alan Watkinson about his true identity. He was given to the care of his friend’s mother.
In July 2000, with Watkinson’s help, Farah obtained British citizenship under the name Mohammed Farah, according to the BBC. He would go on to become one of Britain’s greatest sporting heroes.
Farah, a distance runner, won two gold medals at the 2012 London Olympics, in the 5,000m and 10,000m events. He successfully repeated as champion in both events four years later at the Rio de Janeiro Olympics, winning gold despite a dramatic fall midway through the 10,000.
Farah was knighted by Queen Elizabeth II in 2017.
He has competed in major marathons since briefly retiring from track and field in 2017 and set a national record after winning the 2018 Chicago Marathon in 2 hours 5 minutes 11 seconds.
Farah recently announced that he will run this year’s London Marathon on October 2, his first marathon since 2019.
Isabella Quay contributed reporting from London.
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