A TRIPLE murderer who was beaten unconscious in a jail assault is suing the Ministry of Justice for £100,000 - for not protecting him from violent Muslim inmates.

“Essex Boy” killer Michael Steele, from Great Bentley, was jailed in 1998 for the 1995 gangland murders in Rettendon.

The murderer, now 73, claims he was beaten with a steel pot in a kitchen after an argument over use of a prison telephone in 2010.

He suffered a bad cut, damaged teeth and a fractured eye socket in the assault at HMP Whitemoor, near Peterborough.

A report last year revealed the prison is the first in the country where there are as many Muslim inmates - many of them converts - as non-Muslims.

In his claim, Steele said he has been told by senior staff that Muslim “gangs” in the prison are “impossible to control or discipline” due to their numbers.

Assaults, sometimes involving sugar-laden hot water or sharpened toothbrushes, are frequent and often due to objections about the cooking of pork in wing kitchens, he says.

Steele did recover from the attack and is now suing the government for damages for failing to protect him.

Ministry of Justice lawyers had tried to “strike out” Steele’s claim, but the case is set to go ahead after District Judge Ian Avent, sitting at Central London County Court, ruled it arguable.

He said: “Mr Steele’s claim is predicated on the basis that Muslim prisoners were a violent threat and that the prison was the most volatile of the high security dispersal prisons.”

The court heard Steele had rowed with a Muslim prisoner - referred to as Miller - in January 2010 after being accused of jumping the queue to use a telephone.

The following day he was cooking in a kitchen when he was struck on the head from with what is believed to have been a metal pot.

In his evidence, he said: “At the same instance, the prisoner Miller sprang forward, striking me to the left side of my face.

“That further assisted my inevitable fall to the ground, where Miller and possibly one other kicked me unconscious.”

Prison officers used paper towels to stem the flow of blood, before sending him to Peterborough Hospital. Steele claims prison bosses should have done more to protect him from the attack.

The judge added: “His allegation is that the senior management of the prison were negligent because they employed inappropriate staffing levels that encouraged, and gave opportunity for, frequent levels of violence on vulnerable prisoners."

The Ministry of Justice argued the claim had no chance of succeeding and staff had no reason to suspect Steele was at risk of an attack.

But Mr Avent said prison bosses knew the kitchen was not covered by CCTV and would have contained “any number of potentially deadly instruments”.

He added: “There has to be a minimum level, or standard, of care which has to be put in place by the prison authorities, quite irrespective of whether they are then put on specific notice about a particular prisoner.”