LONDON — British police and medics whose failures contributed to the deaths of 96 soccer fans in the country’s worst sports disaster unfairly blamed the dead for the 1989 tragedy and sought to cover up their actions, newly disclosed documents revealed Wednesday.
The documents vindicated efforts by the victims’ families, who had spent 23 years demanding a full accounting of the events at Hillsborough stadium that killed fans of the Liverpool team. Most of the victims were crushed and suffocated in a standing-only section after police herded them there.
Prime Minister David Cameron issued a full apology Wednesday for the wrongdoing of authorities and the subsequent coverup, saying that Britain had been shamed for more than 20 years by its reluctance to expose the errors that led to the deaths. Lawmakers in the House of Commons gasped and wept as he spoke.
Relatives of the dead had suffered the ‘‘failure of the state to protect their loved ones and the indefensible wait to get to the truth — and the injustice of the denigration of the deceased, that they were somehow at fault for their own deaths,’’ Cameron said.
‘‘I am profoundly sorry for this double injustice that has been left uncorrected for so long,’’ he told lawmakers.
The tragedy took place during a Football Association Cup semifinal between Liverpool and Nottingham Forest on April 15, 1989, at the stadium in Sheffield, northern England. A total of 94 supporters died that day — two more died later, one in 1993 — and almost 800 others were injured when police officers herded around 2,000 Liverpool fans into caged-in enclosures that were already full.
The response to the disaster transformed British sports, bringing the introduction of all-seated soccer stadiums for elite clubs. That, in turn, helped the teams drive out the remnants of hooliganism that had long tainted British soccer, and it heralded a shift in the demographics of sports fans. Improved stadium safety meant more families and women attended matches, but having stadium seats also caused ticket prices to rise — pricing out some of soccer’s traditional working-class fan base.
After an era in which violent English football fans had been the scourge of Europe, the changes eventually instilled new confidence in Britain’s ability to host sports events. That attitude was reflected this summer in London’s hugely successful — and trouble-free — hosting of the 2012 Summer Olympics and Paralympics.
Following a lengthy campaign by victims’ relatives to learn the full details of the Hillsborough disaster, a government-appointed panel reviewed and released 400,000 pages of previously undisclosed documents from police, the government, and local authorities.
Bishop James Jones of Liverpool, who led the panel, said the documents offered clear evidence of failures by British authorities. He said they showed authorities’ extensive attempts to shift blame for the tragedy onto fans and some proof that a number of Liverpool fans were denied medical treatment that could have saved their lives
‘‘There were clear operational failures in response to the disaster and in its aftermath there were strenuous attempts to deflect the blame onto the fans,’’ he said.
Panel member Dr. Bill Kirkup, previously associate chief medical officer at Britain’s health ministry, told reporters that evidence showed 41 of the dead had at least the potential to survive, although he could not be certain that a speedier response would have saved them all.
Tests were carried out on possible alcohol levels in the bloodstreams of the dead for ‘‘no apparent medical reason,’’ and police officers had consulted a national database to check whether victims had criminal records, all in an effort to ‘‘impugn the reputations of the deceased,’’ the report said.