A 24-year-old man with a broken back ''was left to die'' in a Greek hospital after falling 40 feet from a rooftop apartment on the holiday island of Rhodes, an inquest today heard.

Christopher John Rochester had to wait 40 minutes for an ambulance after the fall and was then bumped and bashed around Regional General Hospital in Rhodes Town while he was in immense pain, his brother claimed.

Doctors told the man's brother, Keith, that Christopher would be kept in hospital overnight, but within hours of being admitted he was dead.

North Durham Coroner's Court today heard of a catalogue of mistreatment prior to Christopher's untimely death last June.

The young man, from Ullswater Road, Chester-le-Street, County Durham had travelled to Rhodes with a friend to stay with his brother who was a nightclub DJ in the party district of Faliraki.

He had only been on the island four days when the fatal fall occurred after a night out drinking with friends on June 10, 2000.

Keith Rochester, also from Ullswater Road, Chester-le-Street, said hospital staff showed no compassion as they hauled him into an x-ray room.

Despite sweating profusely and asking for a drink, Christopher received no care from two nurses. Keith was forced to cup his hands to carry water from a drinking fountain to offer his brother a crumb of respite.

His treatment in the early hours of the morning further outraged the family. His friend, David Vest, told the court how Christopher had screamed with pain as hospital porters bashed into doors as they took him on a stretcher to an orthopaedic ward.

Later the pain-wracked man was left to soil himself after a nurse refused to take him to a toilet. Within a matter of hours he was dead.

Keith Rochester said: ''They had him on a bed and left him to die.

''When I had to phone my mam in the morning (to tell her) that her son was dead ... I told her that he shouldn't have died in that hospital that there had been nothing done for him and he shouldn't have died.''