Today, Sir Mo Farah admitted that he has been “hiding a secret all my life” and that his real name is Hussein Abdi Kahin, an illegal immigrant whose identity was stolen from another Somali child.
The 39-year-old, who is the best long distance runner in Britain, claims he was trafficked into the country when he was eight or nine years old and spent his formative years working as a domestic slave for a woman he had never met.
The father of four apologizes in a BBC documentary called The Real Mo Farah, which will be aired tomorrow night, for making false claims about his identity and for the deception in his 2013 autobiography.
He received British citizenship in 2000, a CBE in 2013, and then, using a false name, was knighted by the Queen in 2017.
‘Most people know me as Mo Farah, but that’s not my name or the reality,’ he sobs as he tells the movie.
The truth is that I was born Hussein Abdi Kahin in Somaliland, which is located north of Somalia.
My parents never resided in the UK, despite what I’ve previously claimed.
My father was killed in the civil war when I was four years old.
I was taken away from my mother and illegally entered the UK using the name of a different child named Mohamed Farah.
It’s difficult to face the truth and discuss the circumstances surrounding what happened and why they occurred.
I’m not who you believe I am, that much is certain.
I must now disclose my true story, no matter the consequence.
The hardest part, he continues, is coming to terms with the possibility that a member of his own family may have been responsible for trafficking me.
The fact that I could run was what truly saved me.
If I wanted food in my mouth, I had to cook, clean, change diapers, and wash the children, according to Sir Mo, whose eldest son is Hussein—now known to be his real name.
If you ever want to see your family again, don’t say anything, the woman advised him, according to him.
She is still thought to be living in Hounslow. “I used to simply lock myself in the bathroom and cry a lot.”
In the documentary, Sir Mo travels to the Djiboutian shack he shared with his uncle and from which he was trafficked.
He also travels to Somaliland to see his mother Aisha and his family.
Additionally, Mo thanked the real Mohamed Farah for allowing him to use his name in a conversation with him.
Tania Farah, his wife of 12 years, has claimed that she didn’t find out the truth before their 2010 nuptials because she saw that “there was lots of missing pieces to his story.”
He originally denied lying to her, but after she “wore him down with the interrogation,” he finally admitted it.
The truth appears to have lately come to his children as well.
I want to feel normal and… don’t feel like you’re holding on to something, so that’s the major reason I’m presenting my experience,” he stated.
“I’ve been holding it for so long, it’s been hard because you don’t want to confront it, and frequently my kids ask me, Dad, how come this?” he added.
While you always have a response for anything, you don’t have one for that.
The Home Office promised him today that they would neither revoke his British citizenship or expel him from his Surrey mansion after the great athlete said he had been living a lie, despite his own admission that he was an illegal immigrant whose British nationality had been obtained through fraud.
No action of any kind would be taken against Sir Mo, according to a representative of Priti Patel, and to suggest otherwise is incorrect.
This is due to the fact that he was underage for criminal responsibility in the UK, which is ten years old, and had no control over being smuggled into the country at the age of nine.
Sir Mo had previously stated that he and his parents had left the Somalian civil war and arrived in London as refugees.
Then he claimed that once his father lost interest and his mother moved back in with him after their divorce, he moved in with his aunt and uncle.
He asserted that Muktar, an IT expert with Somali ancestry who was born and raised in London, was his father.
Then, he asserted that before leaving for the UK, his father visited Mogadishu and got to know his mother.
Several of his siblings, according to Mo, followed.
Today, though, he claimed that his real father was a farmer by the name of Abdi who was slain in battle. In his 2013 autobiography, titled “Twin Ambitions” in honour of his elder twin, he falsely claimed that he and his father had fled to Britain as refugees.
He claimed in the book that he was born in Mogadishu, Somalia, and that he and his parents spent the most of his formative years there before escaping the conflict.
I just remembered being happy, and seeing my Dad was definitely a significant element for me, the man reminisced.
I was so eager to meet him as I stepped off the plane.
Even just coming to school was exciting, he said, adding that his father had given him a few “basic words” to help him get by.
However, his mother has never visited the UK and his father died when he was four years old.
He and his twin brother Hassan were later moved to the Horn of Africa’s Djibouti to live with family.
It appears that his family was involved in his trafficking when his mother, Aisha, transferred him there for his safety.
Sir Mo won gold medals in the 5,000 and 10,000 meters races in the Olympic Games in London in 2012 and Rio in 2016, but up until this point, it seems that only his wife, close relatives, and the PE teacher who rescued him from domestic servitude were aware of his secret.
The already unusual life narrative of the Olympic winner is entirely turned on its head.
He explains his true story on the BBC program and gets to know the real Mo Farah, a Somali child whose identity was stolen so that he might enter Britain.
His family forbade him from attending school for the first few years, but when he was about 12 years old, he registered for Year 7 at Feltham Community College.
At the age of 39 and having one of the most illustrious sporting careers under a name that was not his, Sir Mo has not explained why he has chosen to share his tale now.
However, he has acknowledged that he had feared that the truth would result in his deportation and loss of British citizenship.
In the video, attorney Alan Briddock acknowledges that he officially “obtained his nationality by fraud or misrepresentations.”
But he continued: “Trafficking is generally defined as transportation for exploitative objectives.
In your situation, you were forced to care for little children and work as a domestic servant when you were a very young child yourself. After that, you informed the appropriate authorities that “that is not my name.”
All of those factors work together to reduce the possibility that the Home Office will revoke your nationality.
“I don’t think I was ever ready to say anything,” Sir Mo says to his wife Tania. “Not because you want to lie, but because you are protecting yourself.”
He is reportedly seeking legal counsel at this time on how to deal with the Home Office, although he has been assured he won’t face any consequences.
Following Sir Mo Farah’s admission that he was a victim of human trafficking when he was a child and was brought to the UK, Chancellor Nadhim Zahawi hailed him as a “really amazing” role model.
The Tory leadership candidate responded to a question about how reading Sir Mo’s narrative affected him by saying, “Heartbroken, painful.”
I was really fortunate to have my parents with me as we evacuated from Iraq.
I was 11 years old and didn’t comprehend why we were escaping Saddam Hussein, even though I knew he was a dictator and awful.
It was difficult, without a question.
All I can say is, “All I can say is, I admire Mo Farah, what an extraordinary human being to suffer through that tragedy in childhood and to come through it and be such a tremendous role model is genuinely motivating – and outstanding.”
Few could have predicted what would happen. The boy was informed one day that he would be staying with other relatives in Europe.
He was actually using a fake passport carrying his new name, “Mohamed Farah,” which was a name that had been taken from another youngster, to enter the UK illegally as an immigrant. and was warned by his captor to use that identity, perform household duties, and take care of her young children or risk being deported.
We see an immigration lawyer tell Sir Mo that even though he was a blameless child and social services were aware of the truth about his situation, there was still a “real risk” that he could lose his British citizenship in the program, which will be available on BBC iPlayer tomorrow morning and broadcast on BBC1 tomorrow evening.
This was due to “false representations,” which implied that he had gotten his nationality illegally.
He didn’t move to the UK to live with his father; instead, his father had died in his home Somalia as a result of the civil war.
Even more astonishingly, Mo Farah is not his true name.
His father had little interest in him when he was a young child, so when he moved to Britain at the age of eight, he lived with his aunt and uncle.
He entered a challenging junior school in the largely white neighborhood of Feltham, west London, with only the three English phrases “Excuse me,” “Where is the toilet,” and “C’mon then.” Because of his stubbornness to submit, he was always getting into fights.
His traumatic background was widely reported in the media after he won the gold medal in both the 5,000 and 10,000 meters at the London 2012 Olympics.
But the story was far from complete. Yes, Sir Mo Farah was born amid Somalia’s post-war chaos. But practically all of the rest of his early life is made up.
The shocking revelation that young Mo did not enter this nation legally is the most shocking of all.
Instead, he was “trafficked” into Britain and forced to work as a domestic slave for the family of the woman who brought him there for years.
At the start of the BBC broadcast, Sir Mo says, “There is something about me you don’t know.”
Since I was a young child, I had been keeping this a secret. And it’s difficult to be able to discuss the facts, the circumstances around it, and the reasons why it occurred.
I’m not who you believe I am, in actuality. I must now share the real tale, no matter the cost.
The following hour is spent by Sir Mo, 39, in soul-searching.
He exhibits his visa at one point and declares, “Yeah, that’s my photo, but it’s not my name,”
In actuality, Sir Mo was born Hussein Abdi Kahin, a fact he didn’t fully understand until much later and is still having trouble understanding.
He has found happiness as a family man with wife Tania and his four children after his traumatic youth in west London, “when I would hide myself in the bathroom and scream and there was nobody there to help.”
The numerous books that have been written about him, including his own autobiography, will undoubtedly need to be modified in light of the revelations.
In contrast to what has been written, Sir Mo was raised by his original parents, Abdi and Aisha, along with his siblings, including twin brother Hassan, on a farm in Somalia.
But when Mo was four years old and his father lost his life in battle, the family was torn apart.
He and Hassan were transported to Djibouti in the Horn of Africa to live with relatives after being separated from his mother.
Few could have predicted what would happen.
The boy was informed one day that he would be staying with other relatives in Europe.
He was actually using a fake passport showing his new name, “Mo Farah,” which was a name that had been taken from another youngster, to enter the UK illegally as an immigrant.
He says that after being brought to the UK, the woman who brought him to London forced him do household duties for her family.
“I had all the contact information for my relatives,” says Sir Mo, who was knighted in 2017, “but once we arrived to her house, the lady took it off me and right in front of me shredded it up and placed it in the bin and at that moment I knew I was in trouble.”
Uncertainty exists on whether the woman created Sir Mo’s claimed family or kept him from them.
He continues, “If I wanted food in my mouth, my job was to take care of those kids, give them baths, prepare meals for them, and clean for them.
She told me not to say anything if I ever wanted to see my family again. If you speak up, they will remove you.
When the BBC asked the woman at the center of the dispute for comment, she didn’t answer.
The Olympic star claims that it was only after confiding in his PE teacher Alan Watkinson that he was able to leave his dire situation.
After being connected with social services, he moved in with Kinsi, the mother of a schoolmate.
He stayed there for the following seven years, finally content and well-cared for. The teacher who saved Sir Mo also assisted him in obtaining British citizenship.
His athletic prowess started to emerge at this point, and it is from this point that his story becomes the one we are familiar with.
In the documentary, Sir Mo, who provided his child’s name as Hussein, gets to speak through video conversation with the man he mistakenly believed to be Mo Farah all those years ago.
I often think of the other Mohammed Farah, the youngster whose seat I took on the plane, and I sincerely hope he’s OK, Sir Mo says of him just before that touching film.
I bear his name, and that could provide issues for myself and my family, no matter where he is.
The’real’ Mo admits that he was never any good at running despite the fact that, like his renowned counterpart, he is an Arsenal supporter during their later encounter.
He continues by saying that he is childless and unmarried, unlike Sir Mo.
At the end of their conversation, Sir Mo makes a commitment to try to arrange for the man to visit the UK and meet with him.
So why has the revelation of the truth taken so long?
Sir Mo has faced controversy before, not just in this unique story. He failed two drug tests in the run-up to the Olympics, in 2010 and 2011, it was discovered in 2015.
Additionally, he acquired a performance-enhancing substance prior to the 2014 London Marathon, which he neglected to disclose, as reported by the BBC’s Panorama two years ago.
He has always maintained that he is a “clean” athlete and that he forgot about the supplement, which is legal if used in moderation.
At the time, he added, “I can sleep at night knowing I have done nothing wrong.”
Why then has Sir Mo made the decision to finally disclose his dark past? He explains that he did it for his kids because he wanted them to know the truth.
Family is vital to me, and as a parent, you constantly try to instill honesty in your children, he says.
“But I feel like I’ve always had that secret thing where I couldn’t be me and express what’s truly happened,” the speaker said.
I’ve kept it within for so long. It’s been challenging because you don’t want to face it, and my kids frequently ask me, “Dad, why is this?” And while you always have a response for anything, you don’t have one for that.
“That’s the major reason I’m telling you my story, so that you can feel normal and not like you’re holding on to something,” the speaker said.