Six people face criminal charges over Hillsborough football disaster

Criminal charges may be brought against 23 suspects over the 1989 Hillsborough football stadium disaster in the UK which claimed the lives of 96 fans. It remains the country’s worst sporting disaster. Tomorrow is a day which has been a horrendously long time coming for H’boro families, survivors & campaigners https://t.co/aRy2KbUlGR #JFT96— Liverpool Echo (@LivEchonews) 27 juin 2017 What happened at Hillsborough? The Liverpool supporters died in the crush in an overcrowded, fenced-in enclosure at the Hillsborough ground in Sheffield in northern England. They had travelled to the ground for an FA Cup semi-final against Nottingham Forest. It is now 28 years as they fight on for justice #hillsborough pic.twitter.com/wd9uZgaYSZ— alex thomson (@alextomo) 28 juin 2017 Hasn’t there already been a legal process? Yes. Last April, following a two-year inquest, a jury concluded that police who at first blamed the tragedy on drunken fans were responsible for the deaths. They found the police had told lies and staged a cover-up to hide their catastrophic mistakes. Jurors had been told that, to return verdicts of “unlawful killing”, they would have to be sure that David Duckenfield, the police commander in charge at the match, was responsible for “manslaughter by gross negligence”. They ruled the deaths were unlawful. After the inquest, Andy Burnham, the former home affairs spokesman for the opposition Labour Party, said there had been complicity between police, politicians and newspapers in a cover-up that went “right to the top”. But now there could be criminal charges? It is possible. The Independent Police Complaints Commission (IPCC) said prosecutors have been handed evidence files from two investigation teams into the cause of the tragedy and the alleged subsequent attempts to hide the truth. “These criminal investigations into the circumstances surrounding the Hillsborough disaster are the largest investigations into the alleged police wrongdoing ever undertaken in England and Wales,” said IPCC deputy chairperson Rachel Cerfontyne. The CPS said it would consider charges including gross negligence manslaughter, perverting the course of justice and misconduct in public office against the 23 unnamed suspects. “We will now assess these in order to determine whether we have sufficient material on which to make charging decisions,” said Sue Hemming, Head of the CPS Special Crime and Counter-Terrorism Division. Families of the 96 Liverpool fans who died in the #Hillsborough disaster will find out today whether anyone will face criminal charges  pic.twitter.com/HgXTw2EPMc— Anything Liverpool (@Anything_LFC) 28 juin 2017 What do the relatives think? They have demanded that criminal charges be brought against those involved in the failures on the day and the conspiracy to keep them quiet. They have campaigned fro decades to overturn original conclusions that the deaths were accidental.