FOur contemporary Olympic champion Mo Farah has revealed that he was brought into Britain illegally from Djibouti under the name of another child.
“The truth is I am not who you think I am,” said 39-year-old Farah BBC in a documentary called “The Real Mo Farah”.
Farah, who became the first British track and field athlete to win four Olympic gold medals, said his children pushed him to be honest about his past.
“The real story is that I was born in Somaliland, in northern Somalia, as Hussein Abdi Kahin,” he told me. BBC. “Despite what I’ve said in the past, my parents have never lived in the UK
“I had all my relative’s contact details and when we got to her house the lady took it off and right in front of me ripped them off and put them in the bin and at that moment I knew I was in trouble”
– Mo Farah speaks to the BBC in the documentary “The Real Mo Farah”
“When I was four years old, my father was killed in the civil war, you know as a family we were separated. I was separated from my mother and I was brought into the UK illegally in the name of a another child named Mohamed Farah.”
In the documentary, Farah said he thought he was going to Europe to live with relatives and recalls going through a British passport check under the guise of Mohamed at the age of 9 after traveling with a woman he didn’t know before.
“I had all the contact details of my relatives and when we got to her house the lady took it off and right in front of me ripped them off and put them in the bin and at that moment I knew I’m in trouble,” he said.
The athlete has returned to his childhood home in west London, recalling “bad memories” where he was not considered part of the family.
Farah eventually told teacher Alan Watkinson the truth and moved in with his friend’s mother, who took care of him and he stayed for seven years.
It was Watkinson who applied for Farah’s British citizenship, which he described as a “long process.” Farah was recognized as a British citizen in 2000.
