Sir Mo Farah says he was illegally trafficked to the UK as a child

Mo Farah, one of the greatest athletes that Britain has been fortunate to have, was illegally trafficked into the country at the age of nine.

The revelation was made by the Olympian himself in a BBC documentary. He said he was brought in from Djibouti in Somaliland to work as a domestic servant. "The truth is I'm not who you think I am," the 39-year-old star told the BBC in a documentary called "The Real Mo Farah."

He said that he was given the name Mohamed Farah by the people who flew him over from Somaliland and that his real name is Hussein Abdi Kahin. "For years I just kept blocking it out. But you can only block it out for so long," he goes on to add. He had earlier said that he had come to the UK as a refugee with his mother and two brothers.

However, he has now admitted that his mother and two brothers have never even visited the UK and they live on a family farm in the breakaway state of Somaliland. His father was killed by a stray bullet during the civil war in the country. Sir Mo was only four years old when he lost his father.

He was then trafficked to the UK by a woman he had never met or had any connection with. She had instructed him to say that his name was Mohamed Farah if anyone asks.

After arriving in the UK, the woman took him to a house in Hounslow, west London and left him there to look after the children of the family he was staying with and do household chores.

She did not even let him keep the details of his family members. "If I wanted food in my mouth my job was to look after those kids, shower them, cook for them, clean for them, and she said, 'If you ever wanna see your family again, don't say anything,'" says Sir Mo.

He was kept away from school for two years, but was eventually enrolled at Feltham Community College where he thrived at sports and took it up as a coping mechanism.

However, life did not get any better for him until he confided in his physical education teacher, Alan Watkinson, who contacted the social services. Farah was then put in the foster care of another Somali family.

It was his PE teacher who applied for his British citizenship. He was recognised as a British Citizen on July 25, 2000.

"I still missed my real family, but from that moment everything got better. I felt like a lot of stuff was lifted off my shoulders, and I felt like me. That's when Mo came out - the real Mo," Sir Mo says.

Farah, who is considered one of the greatest British athletes, completed the 5,000m and 10,000m Gold Medal double at both the London 2012 and Rio 2016 Olympics.