LONDON — Nearly three decades after the worst stadium disaster in the history of British soccer, a police commander will face 95 counts of manslaughter in the deaths of soccer fans who were trampled and crushed at a match in England in 1989, prosecutors said on Friday.

The decision by a judge to proceed to trial in the case of David Duckenfield represents the latest victory in a long quest for justice by the families of the dead, who included 37 teenagers. Mr. Duckenfield, then a chief superintendent in the South Yorkshire Police, was in charge of security for the match.

More than 700 people were injured in the disaster at Hillsborough Stadium in Sheffield, which emerged as a political flash point over the role of wealth and class in British life.

For many years, the authorities, with the support of some news organizations, sought to suggest that the fans were largely responsible for their own deaths. The families of the victims and survivors fiercely rejected those claims.