​An armed robber starved himself to death in prison during a protest against his conviction more than 20 years earlier, an inquest heard.

Ronnie Easterbrook, who acted as a mediator between the Kray twins, was just 6st 3lb when he died at Gartree Prison, near Market Harborough, following a six-month hunger strike.

The 77-year-old was jailed for life in 1988 for shooting a police officer during an armed robbery at a supermarket in Woolwich, south-east London.

At an inquest yesterday at Leicester Town Hall, a jury found Easterbrook died from pneumonia brought on by his refusal to eat food, adding “he took his own life as a result of deliberate self-starvation’’.

Home Office pathologist Dr Amanda Jeffery told the hearing that Easterbrook, from London’s East End, died on May 10 last year.

She said: “Mr Easterbrook felt he had been unjustly treated by the system and he was refusing food as a protest. He understood the consequences of not eating but he did not want life-sustaining measures.”

The inquest heard Easterbrook, who had arrived at Gartree in 1988, was admitted to the prison medical centre in March last year and told  staff not to resuscitate him.

It was his third hunger strike while at Gartree.

Katherine Wharton, a nurse at the prison, told the hearing: “He had obviously lost a significant amount of weight (by March 2009) but he could get himself out of bed and into a chair while his bedding was changed. He tired very easily and he spent almost all of his day resting in his bed.’’

Easterbrook was caught by police after they received a tip-off about an armed robbery he was planning at a supermarket.

Flying Squad officers were lying in wait and arrested Easterbrook, but not before he had fired several shots, wounding a police inspector.

Easterbrook wanted to claim at his trial that Flying Squad marksmen operated a shoot-to-kill policy, saying one of his accomplices had surrendered but then been shot dead.

But his barrister refused to offer up this defence as it was not allowed at the time and when he was forced to represent himself, Easterbrook was again told he could not use the claim in court.

After being convicted of armed robbery and attempted murder, he was given a whole-life term.

But he refused to recognise his conviction and launched several legal challenges to the tariff.

As a result, the sentence was cut to 12-and-a-half years, allowing him to apply for parole in May 2000.

In 2003, the European Court of Human Rights ruled in Easterbrook’s favour.

But he always refused to take part in the parole process, maintaining until his death that his conviction was unlawful.

Following the hearing, his sister-in-law’s son John Barden said he should now receive an apology from the Government.

The 49-year-old from Kent, said: “I think he (Easterbrook) is still owed an apology because he was in the right. He never denied the crime but it was the way it was dealt with.

“He (Easterbrook) was old school. He was a gentleman. He didn’t like being called a gangster – to him it was just what he was.”