British Prime Minister David Cameron says he is "profoundly sorry" for the "double injustice" of the Hillsborough stadium disaster that killed 96 soccer fans 23 years ago.
Speaking to members of parliament Wednesday, Cameron said newly released documents on the 1989 tragedy and a report by the Hillsborough independent panel, formed three years ago, were "deeply distressing."
"With the weight of the new evidence in the report it's right for me today as prime minister to make a proper apology to the families of the 96," he said. "On behalf of the government, and indeed of our country, I am profoundly sorry that this double injustice has been left uncorrected for so long."
Cameron said the report showed police had failed to do enough and then tried to blame the Liverpool fans.
The previously undisclosed documents show police tried to blame fans to cover up mistakes that contributed to the deaths of those who were crushed at the stadium in Sheffield, England on April 15, 1989.
Police blamed victims, sullied reputations
Cameron said the previously undisclosed papers detail sophisticated attempts by police to turn the blame for the disaster onto the victims and to sully their reputations by insinuating that many were drunken, and had histories of violence or criminality.
"New evidence that we are presented with today makes clear that these families have suffered a double injustice," Cameron told the House of Commons. "The injustice of the appalling events, 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."
