THE appeal hearing of three Greek doctors convicted of the manslaughter of 24-year-old British holidaymaker got under way yesterday.

The dead man's mother and brother were questioned by the doctors' lawyers during the hearing, scheduled for three days.

Christopher Rochester died at the Andreas Papandreou Hospital on the island of Rhodes in June 2000 and the three medics were later convicted of manslaughter by neglect at a hearing at the town's court house, in 2003.

Mr Rochester, from Chester-le-Street, County Durham, was taken to the hospital after falling from a balcony in nearby Faliraki. Evidence at the original trial told how he was ''bounced about'' on a stretcher and left lying on a hospital trolley despite being in severe pain.

The doctors, Stergios Pavlidis, Georgos Karavolias and Mihalis Sokorelos, were subsequently sentenced to three years in jail, pending their appeal.

At the appeal hearing, Mr Rochester's mother, Pam Cummings, was first to address to the three judges.

She said aferwards: "At present, I feel the presiding judge is okay and sympathetic, but what they were asking me was irrelevant and repetitive. They did not ask the important things, like where the doctors were when Christopher should have been treated."

Mr Rochester's brother Keith, who also spoke to the judges, was visibly shaken when he left the inner courtroom. The judge cut short his ordeal by ordering the doctors' lawyers to end their questioning after about 50 minutes.

He said: "The hardest thing they put to me was that if I was under the impression that Christopher was dying, would I have left the hospital.

"If I had thought that. I would never have left his side."

Only two of the doctors attended the appeal, but the third, who was too ill to attend, asked for the case to proceed in his absence.

The appeal hearing was adjourned until today.