A church has played host to a priest who served at an Anglican church in Tripoli, Libya, during last year’s revolution in which Colonel Muammar Gaddafi was overthrown.

Cononley United Church member Peter Field has visited Libya many times over the past 25 years and while there befriended Egyptian priest, the Rev Hamdy Daoud, who has run the Anglican Church in Tripoli for five years.

Mr Field, 76, a retired industrial architect who worked for a company in Libya, hosted Mr Daoud who visited the area to speak of his experiences in Tripoli to the congregation at Cononley Church.

“The Arab Spring revolution brought a time of mistrust, suspicion, uncertainty and fear,” said Mr Field. “Most of his congregation had to leave the country.

“The company which I was doing work for had a terrible time. The manager was arrested a number of times and some of their foreign staff chose to stay because they had families in Tripoli and wives or husbands who worked for the government, who refused to release their passports.

“Two of the Libyan staff that I knew died in the troubles, one being killed in the fighting and one in what was thought to have been an execution.

“They lost virtually everything in Tripoli. Their cars were stolen and most of their accommodation and workshops were stripped bare.”