Following the publication yesterday (September 12th 2012) of the report by the Hillsborough Independent Panel, which found that a police cover-up took place, members of the Hillsborough Family Support Group (HFSG) may pursue legal action against South Yorkshire Police, Sheffield Wednesday FC and the city’s council for corporate manslaughter.
Further to Prime Minister David Cameron’s apology in Parliament yesterday, Michael Mansfield QC, the lawyer acting on behalf of the Hillsborough Family Support Group (HFSG), said: “If David Cameron means what he says and justice has to follow truth, then they have a responsibility today to assess not just the question of unlawful killing but the cover-up and the perversion of the course of justice.”
Trevor Hicks, the chairman of the HSFG, said that the group would pursue legal action against those involved at South Yorkshire Police and elsewhere, if the state does not, for their part in what the Hillsborough Independent Panel called “multiple failures” of several organisations involved.
The victims’ families brought a private prosecution in 2000, but Chief Superintendent David Duckenfield and his deputy Bernard Murray were found not guilty of counts of manslaughter, misconduct and perverting the course of justice.
The families will now meet in the next few days to discuss how to take matters further and their first step would be to get the inquest verdicts of accidental death overturned, which is already being considered by Attorney General, Dominic Grieve.
The original inquest into the deaths said that the 96 who died had suffered traumatic asphyxia, and were dead within minutes of the crush. This had led to the claim that beyond 3:15pm no actions could have been taken to change the fate of those killed that day. However this assumption has been contradicted by the new report.