“The real story is that I was born in Somaliland, in northern Somalia, as Hussein Abdi Kahin, and despite what I’ve said in the past, my parents never lived in the UK,” Farah explains in clips from the documentary that have already been published. The 39-year-old athlete had always maintained that he came to Britain with his parents as a refugee. He thought he would put his citizens at risk by sharing his story, but the British government has assured him that there is nothing to fear. An Interior Ministry spokesman said in a statement on Tuesday that no action would be taken against Farah and that “suggesting otherwise is incorrect.” According to government guidelines, children are not complicit in fraud or misrepresentation committed by their parents or guardians. A lawyer speaking to Farah in the documentary, Alan Briddock, says Farah is unlikely to lose her British citizenship because she suffered the facts as a child and had shared her story with the relevant authorities.
In the documentary, the laureate athlete explains that he was separated from his family after his father was killed during the Somali civil war. He was brought to Britain at the age of 9 by an unknown woman under the name of another child who was not his: Mohamed Farah. He thought he would stay with relatives, but the reality is that he was forced into domestic servitude. “I had all the contact details of my relatives listed and once we got to her house, the lady took them from me and just in front of me tore them up and threw them in the bin, and at that moment I knew I had problems, “he explains in the documentary. “If I wanted to eat, my job was to take care of these children, shower them, cook them and clean them,” he says. And she told me that if I wanted to see my family again, I couldn’t say anything, that if I said something, they would take me away. ”
Until the age of 12 he was forced to do housework and care for other children. Years later, when she was enrolled in school, Farah confessed to her gymnastics teacher, Alan Watkinson, her real identity. He was then placed in charge of a friend’s mother. In July 2000, with Watkinson’s help, Farah received British citizenship under the name Mohamed Farah, according to the BBC report. Years later, he would become one of the greatest sporting heroes in Britain’s contemporary history.
A leading athlete
Farah, distance runner, won two gold medals at the 2012 London Olympics, in the 5,000 and 10,000 meter races. He successfully repeated as champion in the two races four years later at the Rio de Janeiro Olympics, winning gold despite a notorious fall in the middle of the 10,000 meters. Farah was also knighted by Queen Elizabeth II in 2017. She has competed in major marathons since she briefly retired 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 she will run this year’s London Marathon on October 2, her first marathon since 2019.
Copyright The New York Times
