Bulgaria's former Vice President Angel Marin pardoned mainly murderers and culprits of other grave crimes during his two terms of office, it has been made clear.

During his 10 years in office, Marin worked actively in order to pardon convicted felons, many of whom had committed brutal crimes, the BGNES news agency has revealed, citing newly released details. Many of the criminals have been released and are now walking the streets.

Nearly 50% of the prisoners in Sofia's Central Prison pardoned by Marin had been sentenced for murder. More than half of the 94 felons pardoned from the Stara Zagora prison are murderers.

23 out of the total of 36 felons pardoned by Marin in the prison located in the town of Belene were also convicted for murder. One of them served just 7 years of his 20-year jail sentence.

Among the 26 pardoned criminals in the Bobov Dol prison, 16 were murderers, many of them with sentences of over 20 years. 16 more murderers were pardoned in the Lovech prison. More than half of the felons pardoned in the Sliven prison had committed murder.

209 of those who were pardoned by Bulgarian Vice President Angel Marin and President Georgi Parvanov (it is mainly the VP who handles the pardoning of prisoners) had been sentenced for severe crimes such as murders, kidnappings, assaults, enticement into prostitution, and human trafficking.

It has already been revealed that some of the criminals pardoned by former Vice President Angel Marin were sentenced to 30 years in jail, 9 had sentences of over 25 years; 37 of them were supposed to spent 20 years behind bars; 192 of those pardoned had jail terms from 11 to 20 years; and 180 convicts had sentences up to 10 years in jail; only 10 pardoned prisoners had light sentences of less than a year.

Of the 431 criminals pardoned by Marin and Parvanov, 333 were partially pardoned, and 98 were fully pardoned.

The list of the pardoned criminals has not been fully revealed. However, their initials have been revealed.

Angel Marin recently returned the highest state order, "Stara Planina" - 1st degree, as an act of protest against Prime Minister Boyko Borisov's comment that he did not really deserve it.