Mo Farah, the celebrated England long-distance runner and four-time Olympic gold medalist in the 5,000m and 10,000m events, has revealed that he was smuggled into the country as a child and that his real name was Hussein.
According to a report in the Daily Mail on Tuesday, the 39-year-old, who won both the 5,000m and 10,000m events at the 2012 London Olympics and the Rio Games, was trafficked into the UK from war-torn Somalia under the name of another child after his father was killed in his home country.
The champion runner also admitted to working as a domestic helper for the family of “the woman who brought him to Britain.”
While the world was aware that Mo Farah arrived in Britain as an eight-year-old and lived with his uncle and aunt, the star athlete’s revelations in the BBC documentary ‘The Real Mo Farah,’ which will air on Wednesday, have come as a surprise.
Mo Farah claims that when he first arrived in the United Kingdom, he only knew three English phrases: ‘Excuse me,’ ‘Where is the toilet?’ and ‘Come on then.’
The athlete, whose given name was Hussein Abdi Kahin, attended a “tough junior school in the predominantly white area of Feltham, west London, where his refusal to be cowed meant he was constantly getting into fights.”
The athlete also revealed his biological parents’ names, Abdi and Aisha.
Mo Farah’s father was killed in the war in 1987 when he was four years old, and he was separated from his mother and sent to Djibouti to live with relatives. However, he was smuggled into the UK as an illegal immigrant in 1993 “under a false passport bearing his new identity ‘Mo Farah’ — a name stolen from another child,” according to the report.
During his first year of junior school in 1994 in Feltham, west London, he confided in his teacher, who alerted social services to his situation, and Mo Farah was placed in the care of another family.
“There is a something about me you don’t know,” Mo reveals at the beginning of the BBC programme. “It’s a secret I’ve been hiding since I was a child. And to be able to face it and talk about the facts, how it happened, why it happened, is tough. The truth is I’m not who you think I am. And now, whatever the cost, I need to tell the real story.”
He then produces his visa document, and says, “Yeah that’s my photo, but it’s not my name.”
Recounting the tough times he faced in west London, Mo Farah says, “I would lock myself in the bathroom and cry and there was nobody there to help.”
Mo Farah, who was knighted in 2017, added, “I had all the contact details for my relatives (back home in Somalia) and once we got to her (the woman who brought him to Britain) house, the lady took it off me and right in front of me ripped them up and put it in the bin and at that moment I knew I was in trouble.
“If I wanted food in my mouth my job was to look after those kids, shower them, cook for them, clean for them, 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’.”
Mo Farah says his PE teacher Alan Watkinson helped him get away from the family and also helped him get the UK citizenship.
“I often think about the other Mohammed Farah, the boy whose place I took on the plane and I really hope he’s OK. Wherever he is, I carry his name and that could cause problems now for me and my family,” he added.
(Inputs from IANS)