Today marks a profound day in the history of English football with the release of the Hillsborough Independent Panel report, which reviewed 400,000 original documents to uncover the coverup by South Yorkshire Police. The report puts to rest the conspiracy theories that Liverpool fans were a cause of the disaster. We can now put to rest those lies, knowing that the truth has been revealed. The cause of the Hillsborough Disaster was a failure of police control.

The Hillsborough Independent Panel report is now available for viewing here:

HIP Report

Or you can download it directly here.

THE TRUTH:

116 out of 164 police statements were amended to remove comments that were directly unfavorable to the South Yorkshire police.

The panel replies that 41 had the potential to survive after 3.15pm, though they can’t say how many could have been saved.

Apology from The Sun editor Kelvin MacKenzie:

Kelvin MacKenzie, the editor of The Sun when the paper ran a front page story blaming fans for the Hillsborough tragedy, today offered his “profuse apologies to the people of Liverpool”.

Mr MacKenzie, who wrote the headline The Truth on the controversial report, said in a statement: “Today I offer my profuse apologies to the people of Liverpool for that headline.

“I too was totally misled. Twenty three ago I was handed a piece of copy from a reputable news agency in Sheffield in which a senior police officer and a senior local MP were making serious allegations against fans in the stadium.

“I had absolutely no reason to believe that these authority figures would lie and deceive over such a disaster.

“As the Prime Minister has made clear these allegations were wholly untrue and were part of a concerted plot by police officers to discredit the supporters thereby shifting the blame for the tragedy from themselves.

“It has taken more than two decades, 400,000 documents and a two-year inquiry to discover to my horror that it would have been far more accurate had I written the headline The Lies rather than The Truth. “I published in good faith and I am sorry that it was so wrong.”

Please use this open thread below to post your opinions. Plus, if you find any revealing facts in the report, please post them in the comments section below (feel free to include the page number to make it easier for us to find).

Also, in addition to the report itself, the 400,000 documents have been made available. You can search through the indexes to view PDFs of all of the documents at http:\/\/hillsborough.independent.gov.uk/browse/