Olympic champion Mo Farah reveals he was a victim of illegal trafficking and slavery in the UK

Mo Farah celebrates Olympic gold in Rio 2016. Jae C. Hong (AP)

British athlete Mo Farah was brought to the UK illegally as a child and treated as a domestic slave, he revealed in a BBC documentary.

In the program, entitled "The real Mo Farah", which will be broadcast on Wednesday by the British station, Farah points out that he had said that he was born in Somalia and that he had entered the United Kingdom as a refugee from Mogadishu when he was 9 years old to join his father who works in London, which was not true.

According to the Olympic star, winner of four Olympic gold medals and six World Cup titles, he was a victim of illegal trafficking when he was brought to London from Djibouti in the 1990s and that his real name is Hussein Abdi Kahin.

"For years I kept this hidden," the athlete said, adding that his parents never traveled to the UK and that his mother and two brothers live on a farm in Somaliland, which declared independence in 1991 but is not recognized internationally.

Her father, Abdi, was shot dead when Farah was 4 years old during civil violence in Somalia.

As he explained, he then went to live with relatives in Djibouti and was later taken to the UK by a woman he had never seen and who was not related to him.

She told him that he was taking him to Europe to live with relatives, something that encouraged her because he had never flown before.

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However, upon arriving in London, this woman took him to her apartment in the Hounslow neighborhood, in the west of the British capital, and told him that he would start being called Mohamed.

From then on he was forced to do housework and take care of children from another family, while he was not allowed to go to school until he was 12 years old.

It was at school that he showed his talent for athletics, something that, according to him, changed his life because he was able to participate in competitive events in British schools.

His sports teacher, Alan Watkinson, helped him obtain British citizenship under the name Mohamed Farah, which was granted to him by the authorities in July 2000. The athlete said he wanted to tell his story to draw attention to slavery and the human trafficking.

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