Less than a fortnight after losing the final round of her battle for her husband's help in ending her life, Diane Pretty has died after suffering the very breathing difficulties she had fought to be spared.

Mrs Pretty, 43, from Luton, Bedfordshire, died at a hospice near her home at 4.25pm on Saturday, with her husband, Brian, at her side.

The mother-of-two, who suffered from motor neurone disease, had begun experiencing breathing problems 10 days ago, three days after she lost the final stage of her right-to-die court challenge. Mr Pretty said: "Diane had to go through the one thing she had foreseen and was afraid of - and there was nothing I could do to help." But she was "free at last", he said.

His wife, who was diagnosed with the disease in 1999, had battled through the high court, the House of Lords, and finally the European court of human rights for the right to her husband's help in dying before the choking and asphyxia which often mark the final stages of the illness. Backed by the civil rights group Liberty, she took the case to court after the director of public prosecutions (DPP), David Calvert-Smith, refused to give her husband an assurance that he would not be prosecuted if he helped her commit suicide.

Suicide is not a crime but she was physically unable to take her own life. Without court sanction or an assurance from the DPP, her husband would have faced a possible prosecution for aiding and abetting suicide, which carries a prison term of up to 14 years.

On April 29 she failed in her application to the European court of human rights, which ruled that the state was not obliged to sanction steps to avoid the inhuman and degrading effects of a disease. Afterwards she said: "The law has taken all my rights away."

She died in the hospice which had helped care for her throughout her illness.

Brian Pretty said: "On Thursday May 2 Diane asked me to call the doctor as she was having trouble with her breathing. She had no chest infection and her airways were clear. The next day she went into the hospice and started having breathing problems again.

"The doctors and nurses managed to make her stable for a few days but she was still in pain. The staff were wonderful at their job and there was always someone there with her. They had trouble getting her comfortable and pain-free until Thursday evening, after which she started to slip into a coma-like state and eventually died.

"Out of all this, Diane had to go through the one thing she had foreseen and was afraid of going through and there was nothing I could do to help. I was with Diane most of the day and was about to go home when I was stopped and told it was 'time' and then for Diane it was over, free at last."

Deborah Annetts, director of the Voluntary Euthanasia Society, which had backed her fight, said: "Diane was an extraordinary woman. Everyone who had the privilege of meeting her was struck by her humanity and bravery in the face of unbearable suffering."

Her death came on the eve of her story being featured on BBC TV's Panorama programme last night.

Asked by a reporter whether her life, despite being paralysed from the neck down, doubly incontinent and unable to speak, was not better than being dead, she tapped out through a machine operating by pressure from her wrist: "I am dead."

Rachel Hurst, director of Disability Awareness in Action, said the organisation stood by its support of the European court's decision.

"The issue about Diane Pretty is that she wanted to kill herself, but I am afraid it would be very wrong for justice to say in certain circumstances people can die. It would be a slippery slope and many people who did not want to die could be affected.

"Palliative care does take away a great deal of the problem and was her death any worse than someone in the Potters Bar crash?

"I certainly would not have wanted the courts to have made any other decision than they did, but I realise how very difficult it is for loved ones to stand by and watch someone die," she said.