13/02/2013

Coroner Announced For Hillsborough Inquest

Lord Justice Goldring has been announced as the coroner to oversee the new inquests into the Hillsborough disaster.

Fresh inquests are to be held into Britain’s worst sporting disaster, in which 96 football fans were crushed to death at a 1989 FA Cup semi-final on the steel-fenced terraces of Sheffield Wednesday’s home stadium.

The inquests were ordered in December last year after a panel of High Court judges ruled the original accidental death verdicts were false.

It is anticipated the inquests will be held together and as soon as possible.

Lord Justice Goldring was the senior presiding judge of England and Wales from January 2010 to December last year.

The enquiry into the Hillsborough disaster came about partly as a result of a Sun newspaper story which claimed Liverpool fans had picked the pockets of victims and attacked and urinated on police and rescue workers.

But a report delivered in September 2012 found police had deliberately manipulated over 160 witness statements in order to put the blame on Liverpool fans for the fatal crush.

It found crowd safety was "compromised at every level" and that 41 of the 96 who died could have survived.

(IT/GK)

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