I was victim of child trafficking, says Mo Farah

Sir Mo Farah was brought to the UK illegally as a child and forced to work as a domestic servant, he has revealed.

The Olympic star told the BBC, yesterday, he was given the name Mohamed Farah by those who flew him over from Djibouti. His real name is Hussein Abdi Kahin.

He was flown over from the East African country aged nine by a woman he had never met, and then made to look after another family’s children, he says.

“For years I just kept blocking it out,” the Team GB athlete says. “But you can only block it out for so long.”

The long-distance runner has previously said he came to the UK from Somalia with his parents as a refugee.

But in a documentary by the BBC and Red Bull Studios, seen by BBC News and airing today, he says his parents have never been to the UK – his mother and two brothers live on their family farm in the breakaway state of Somaliland.

His father, Abdi, was killed by stray gunfire when Sir Mo was four years old, in civil violence in Somalia. Somaliland declared independence in 1991, but is not internationally recognised.

Sir Mo says he was about eight or nine years old when he was taken from home to stay with family in Djibouti. He was then flown over to the UK by a woman he had never met and wasn’t related to.

She told him he was being taken to Europe to live with relatives there – something he says he was ‘excited’ about. “I’d never been on a plane before,” he says.