Revealed: We find the twin brother Mo Farah was forced to abandon as a child in war-torn Somalia

The twin brother of Britain’s Olympic gold medal hero Mo Farah has spoken for the first time about how they were torn apart as boys amid the chaos of civil war in Somalia. In a heartbreaking story of a childhood fractured by violence and turmoil, Hassan Farah has revealed he and Mo had such a close bond that they slept in the same bed and shared food from the same plate. 

 The pair were so strikingly similar that teachers and even friends confused one for the other. But the boys were forced to say goodbye at the age of eight when their parents made the agonising decision to send three of their six children, including Mo, to Britain for a chance of a better life. It was a wrench neither of them has forgotten and it was a full 12 years until the twins saw each other again.

Hassan grew up amid dust and poverty in the African state of Djibouti which borders Somalia, and has watched without bitterness or resentment as his brother, who excelled on the sports fields of England, became a world-class athlete. 

 Mo has rarely spoken about his family back in Africa. But The Mail on Sunday tracked Hassan down to his modest home in Hargeisa, northern Somalia, last week. It was here, half a world away from the Olympic Stadium in London, that Hassan watched TV with pride and happiness as his brother secured an unprecedented double gold triumph.

 It was midnight before well-wishers stopped calling at Hassan’s door to share their excitement and joy at the town’s famous son. Yesterday, still celebrating and still wearing his white Team GB jersey, Hassan spoke about the extraordinary events that tore him and his brother apart. ‘We had been together in everything, we were inseparable,’ he said. ‘We shared food from the same plate, we shared a bed and we played and studied together. 

There is a special love between twins that is different from other sibling love. ‘When Mo was sent away I was left with an empty space in my heart. That space has never been filled, but he is still somewhere in my heart and I know I am in his. ‘Like many Somali families we were torn apart by war. In my case it felt more tragic than most. I feel I lost the other half of myself, my twin brother.

 ‘These days we are all still close, despite the difficulties of travel and communications in this country.’ Hassan believes they can never make up the lost years spent apart, but it is telling that when Mo triumphed with gold in the 10,000m, his brother was one of the first people he called. Hassan said: ‘He told me, “Pray for me, my brother. I have great hopes that I can win a second gold. It is what I’ve waited for all this time”.

The twins’ father is Muktar Farah. He had left Somalia as a young man and settled in London where he worked as an IT consultant. During a holiday visit to his homeland he married Amran – and decided to stay. They made a life together in Mogadishu and already had two sons and a daughter when the twins arrived. Mohammed and Hassan were born in Mogadishu in March 1983, at the beginning of relentlessly troubled times for the beleaguered capital city of Somalia. 

Fighting between deadly rival clans was becoming a daily hazard in the city. The president, dictator Siad Barre who had seized power in 1969, was under increasing pressure from warlords who joined forces against him. Barre was finally ousted and exiled in 1990, and a long, bloody civil war was to shape the country’s future for more than 20 years. Cautious hopes for security and stability are only now being expressed, with democratic elections planned for next month.

 For Mo and Hassan’s parents the disintegration of their country after 1990 meant harsh and agonising decisions. Hassan recalled: ‘We were small and there was shooting and killing every day near our home. We knew our father was going back to England to try to make a family home for us there, and our mother was taking our brothers back to her home village in the north. ‘Everyone’s family was in turmoil during that time.

 There were refugee camps outside the city, people living in tents. Others were desperate to get out, and although we were very young we knew it was a time when families were making painful decisions. ‘They sent us, and our older sister Ifrah, to live in Djibouti with our grandmother so that we could have a peaceful childhood. For Mo and me, it was enough that we were staying together.’

 The boys’ maternal grandmother had settled in a poor suburb of Djibouti city. The monsoon blows all year in a climate officially described as torrid. From October to April the average temperature is 37C (98F). Hassan said: ‘We were sporty kids, Mo and me. But it was too hot; too hot to do almost anything. We played football in the streets and we ran around a lot, playing chase and always beating the other boys.

But there were no facilities, just the streets. We were keen on football and Mo and me were never picked for the same side, no one would have been able to beat us. There we were, refugees from a war, living without our parents, and I remember a very happy childhood. All I needed then for my security and stability was my brother.

 ‘We did everything together, we were best friends. There was occasionally a fight and it would last one minute, both of us collapsing with laughter.’ No one could tell the twins apart. ‘We used to swap clothes halfway through the day just to confuse everyone.

‘It drove our teachers to distraction, even in the serious atmosphere of the madrasa we attended where we learnt the Holy Koran.’ Hassan remembers a day sitting on the front step of their grandmother’s house. 

‘I said something cheeky to a girl walking by, and when she came back with her brothers to get me into trouble they found Mo sitting there instead. I nearly let him take the blame but in the end I couldn’t do it, I owned up. 

That’s how it was with Mo and me.’ The boys’ mother had settled back into her rural home, a tiny village in the remote desert area between Hargeisa town and the Ethiopian border. There, she received news from her husband in England that, as an asylum seeker, he could bring their children over to join him. But crucially, he told her he could take only three – as many as he could afford to support.