When Omar was a child, his father, a prominent attorney and union organiser, was arrested and executed by Muammar Gaddafi's government in Libya.[3] His mother took him and his siblings to the United Kingdom, where they had often visited for extended stays, and gained asylum as refugees. They lived in Brighton. According to the Birmingham Post, Deghayes was a "laws graduate"; he studied law at the University of Wolverhampton and later studied in Huddersfield.[4]