THE 96 victims of the Hillsborough tragedy can finally rest in peace after an independent report said Liverpool fans were not to blame, campaigners said yeserday.

But Hillsborough Families Support Group member Trevor Hicks, said the Hillsborough Independent Panel’s report revealed shocking “depths of depravity” in the way the police tried to blame the fans after the disaster.

He said the report showed that “possibly as many as 41 people might have survived” if the disaster had been better handled.

Asked what was a shock in the report, group chairwoman Margaret Aspinall, who lost her 18- year-old son, James, in the disaster, said: “It was how many could have been saved.

“That makes me sad, because I’ll go home and think, ‘Was James one of them’.”

Mr Hicks, who lost his teenage daughters, said the families had been “blown away” by the contents of the report.

“We had suspected it but now we know the full extent of the conspiracy,”

he added.

“What has thrown me today, apart from the fact that so many people could have been saved, is that what went on with the police also went on with the ambulance service.

“It beggars belief. We knew it was bad but we didn’t know it was this bad.”

He went on: “It isn’t just about getting ambulances there, it’s about what you do with them when they’re at the scene.

“One of the things which hit me particularly hard is the triage procedures were not put in place even as late as 30 or 40 minutes after the game was stopped.

“To find out up to 41 people could have been saved is mindblowing.”

He said the primary cause of the poor response by the ambulance service was that South Yorkshire Police did not initiate the disaster plan, something which the families had always said was the case.