(London) Four-time British Olympic athletics champion Mo Farah said he was “relieved” on Wednesday that the United Kingdom was not taking legal action against him after his revelations about his entering the country under a false identity when he was a child.
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“I’m relieved: for me, it’s my country,” reacted Farah, author of the 5000m/10,000m double at the 2012 and 2016 Olympics.
“No child wants to be in this situation. We made the decision for me. And I’m just grateful for all the opportunities I’ve had in the UK and proud to represent my country the way I did.”
Farah, 39 and knighted by the Queen of England for his exploits on the athletics tracks, revealed in a documentary on Tuesday that he arrived in the UK illegally before being forced to work as a servant.
“The truth is, I’m not who you think I am. Most people know me as Mo Farah, but that’s not the reality. I was separated from my mother, and I was brought to the UK illegally under the name of another child,” he explained in an interview broadcast on the BBC.
His wife Tania said she felt “sadness” and “anger” upon learning the truth. According to her, her husband “finally allows himself to feel these feelings of pain and hurt” and the documentary will have been for him “a form of therapy”.
Despite these revelations, the British Home Office confirmed on Tuesday that it would not take “any action against Sir Mo Farah and that to suggest otherwise was false”.
Mo Farah reveals in the documentary that his real name is Hussein Abdi Kahin. His father was killed in Somalia when he was four years old. His mother and two brothers live in the separatist region of Somaliland, unrecognized by the international community.
Her story is a “shocking reminder of the horrors faced by those who are trafficked and we must continue to fight the criminals who take advantage of vulnerable people,” a Downing Street spokesperson said.
As part of its controversial anti-immigration policy, the British government plans to deport asylum seekers to Rwanda, a strategy criticized by human rights groups and currently blocked by the Court European human rights.