DISGRACED former police chief Sir Norman Bettison was accused of slapping the victims of Hillsborough in the face yesterday after he published a self-serving book attacking the Hillsborough Independent Panel and investigation into the 1989 disaster — in which he is directly implicated.

In a spectacularly offensive screed against the relatives of the 96 people who died at Hillsborough, the very man accused of orchestrating the subsequent cover-up and smear campaign against the dead whined that he was merely a scapegoat who was in “the wrong place at the wrong time.”

Bettison, who was a senior officer in South Yorkshire police at the time of the tragedy and who was specifically singled out for criticism by the panel, makes the claims in Hillsborough Untold: Aftermath of a Disaster, in what many will see as a cynical attempt to exculpate himself and deny the evidentially supported claims of a police cover-up.