‘The truth is I’m not who you think I am’

Olympic great Mo Farah won praise from across Britain's political spectrum Tuesday after the shock revelation that he was illegally trafficked as a child to the country and forced to work in domestic servitude.

The 39-year-old distance runner, one of Britain's best-loved and most successful athletes, told a BBC documentary that his real name is Hussein Abdi Kahin.

Rather than moving to the UK as a refugee from Somalia with his parents as previously claimed, Farah said he came from Djibouti aged eight or nine with a woman he had never met, was given a false identity, and then made to look after another family's children.

In fact, he said, his father was killed in civil unrest in Somalia when Farah was aged four and his mother, Aisha, and two brothers live in the breakaway state of Somaliland.

"The truth is I'm not who you think I am," Farah said in the documentary, explaining that his mother wanted him far removed from Somalia's civil wars.

The admission could have raised questions about Farah's UK citizenship, but the interior ministry said he was in the clear.