Mo Farah, 39, quadruple Olympic champion in athletics, knighted by the queen for his sporting exploits, is really called Hussein Abdi Kahin. In a BBC documentary broadcast on July 13, 2022, he reveals his true identity and his illegal arrival in the UK in 1992 against the backdrop of war and chaos in Somalia, his native country.
“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 into the UK illegally under another child’s name’
Mo Farah, four-time British Olympic championBBC
It took time, a long time for Mo Farah to tell his story. That of Hussein Abdi Kahin, born in 1983 in the midst of the civil war in Somalia. After the death of his father, he is sent to live with an uncle in Djibouti. When he was barely nine years old, a lady he had never seen before came to pick him up to take him to Europe to join relatives. He travels with a passport in the name of Mohamed Farah and arrives in the United Kingdom where he is taken to an apartment in West London. He has to do the housework and take care of the children. “If you ever want to see your family again, don’t say anything”he is advised.
“I often locked myself in the bathroom and cried”
Mo Farah, four-time British Olympic championBBC
After two years of modern slavery, the child goes to school. He is 12 years old, speaks very little English but he runs very fast. The child is then spotted by his physical education teacher who gives him confidence. Mo Farah then gives him his secrets: his fake name, his fake family and his real life. His teacher contacts the social services who place him in another Somali host family where everything is going well. At 17, he obtained British citizenship and, a few years later, became the first Briton to win four Olympic titles in athletics. A feat that earned him all the honors including that of being ennobled by Queen Elizabeth II in 2017.
Sir Mo Farah will remain discreet for a long time about his true identity. But at 39, he decides to speak out to denounce child trafficking, which continues in different forms, and modern slavery of which vulnerable and undocumented people in Europe are victims. Mo Farah explains that it was his four children who prompted him to reveal the truth about his past. One of them is called Hussein, like him before he left Somalia. “I often think of the other Mohamed Farah, the boy whose seat I took on that plane, and I really hope he is well“, he confides in the BBC documentary. We also learn that the Olympic athlete was able to reconnect with his family who lives in Somaliand, an autonomous region in the north of Somalia. We thus discover pictures of Mo Farah with his mother in a tweet posted the day of the film’s release.