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 battles over immigration 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 that’s not the reality,” he said in a BBC documentary scheduled 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 released on Monday. Farah, 39, previously said he 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 quickly showed he had little to fear. A Home Office spokesman said in a statement on Tuesday that no action would be taken against Farah and that it was “wrong to suggest otherwise”. Under government guidelines, children are not complicit in a fraud or misrepresentation committed by their parent or guardian. A lawyer who spoke to Farah in the documentary, Alan Briddock, said Farah was unlikely to lose his citizenship because he had been trafficked as a child and had shared his story with the authorities. In the documentary, Farah said he was separated from his family after his father died during Somalia’s civil war. Moved to Britain at 9 with a woman with another child’s name, Mohamed Farah. She thought she would stay with relatives, but was forced into domestic servitude. “I had all the contact details for my relative and as soon as we got to her house my lady took them out and right in front of me she 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, my job was to take care of these children, shower them, cook for them, clean them,” Farah said. “And he said, ‘If you ever want to see your family again, don’t say anything. If you say something, they will take you away.” Years later, when enrolled at school, Farah told his gym teacher, Alan Watkinson, of his true identity. He was placed in the care of a friend’s mother. In July 2000, with Watkinson’s help, Farah obtained British citizenship under the name Mohamed 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 halfway through the 10,000. Farah was knighted by Queen Elizabeth II in 2017. He has competed in major marathons since briefly retiring from competitive athletics in 2017 and set a national record after winning the 2018 Chicago Marathon with a time of 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 Kwai contributed reporting from London.
