A SENIOR prison officer yesterday rejected claims that he bore a significant responsibility for the death of an inmate found hanged in a cell.

Leslie Thomas, representing the family of Paul Day, claimed senior officer Paul Sirrell had treated Day "appallingly", despite the fact he was on suicide watch, and also accused Mr Sirrell of racism.

Mr Thomas levelled the charges at Mr Sirrell at the end of an intense cross-examination at an inquest in Chester-le-Street, County Durham.

Mr Sirrell, who was an officer on the segregated unit at Durham's Frankland Prison at the time of Day's death, rejected the allegations. He said he had always treated all prisoners with respect and "abhorred racism in every shape and form."

He was testifying at the end of the third week of the inquest into the death of Day, 31, from Essex.

Day had been serving a sentence of eight years for robbery and assaulting an inmate.

The hearing was told that Day had been taking part in one of the biggest dirty protests ever seen in a British jail. On the day he died, in October 2002, he had asked to come off the protest, but was left waiting for three hours before he was taken for a shower. Mr Sirrell said the delay was acceptable, because staff had other duties.

During this period, no visits to Day had been logged, despite an instruction on his suicide watch form that he should be checked frequently. Mr Sirrell said he understood the instruction to mean once every hour, though an officer responsible for the instruction said earlier it should have been four times an hour.

Mr Sirrell denied claims he had targeted Day for opposing how other protestors were allegedly being mistreated. He said that despite weeks of a "horrendous" protest, he was "impressed by the way everyone maintained their professionalism." Mr Thomas said Mr Sirrell had every motive to lie about the events leading to Day's death.

"You bear significant responsibility for this man taking his life," he said. "I suggest you treated him in an appalling way for a man on suicide watch, and vulnerable. At one point you suggested to Day that if he was going to hang himself he should just get on with it."

Mr Sirrell rejected the allegations. The hearing continues.