Skopje, 20 December 2021 (MIA) – The proposed lists to have convicts pardoned for the New Year’s holidays are unacceptable for Justice Minister Bojan Marichikj and have been sent back to the prison administrations to be further analyzed, the Justice Ministry told MIA. Also, Deputy Justice Minister Agium Nuhiu has announced that the list of proposals for pardons to be granted by President Stevo Pendarovski has been withdrawn. “We inform the public that the initiative for pardons launched by the prison managements has been withdrawn by the Justice Ministry. We will always act to protect justice,” Nuhiu wrote in a Facebook post. Earlier today, he said he distanced himself from the list of convicts put forward to the President to grant pardons, signed by Justice Minister Bojan Marichikj. He has said that the Justice Minister doesn’t grant pardons, after the alleged list was leaked. “The Justice Minister is not the one who grants pardons. These pardons are granted on the occasion of New Year’s and lists of convicts whose sentences will be cut down are drafted by the prison wardens before being sent to be considered. I believe that the convicts whose alleged pardoning has been disputed will not even be in the lists. The draft-lists are made by the prisons, not by the Justice Ministry and the lists are filtered four times,” Justice Minister Bojan Marichikj told Slobodna TV’s Morning Briefing show. The procedure is not public, he added. “It is ungrateful to reveal names in the early stages. We will make sure not one disputable candidate is in the lists,” Marichikj stressed. President Pendarovski’s office told MIA that the pardoning commission will schedule a session once the final list containing proposals for group pardoning is sent by the Justice Ministry. “As always, we will inform the public as soon as we reach decisions,” said Pendarovski’s office. The alleged list of convicts to be fully or partially pardoned includes 48 inmates, including businessman Seat Kochan, Aleksandar Vasilevski, the controversial witness of the prosecution regarding the April 27, 2017 Parliament storming, Boban Ilikj, convicted for vehicular homicide involving a 4-year-old boy in Kumanovo, etc. Alliance for Albanians protesters threw red pain over the entrance of the Justice Ministry as a show of revolt over the initiative. Omer Ajdini of the Alliance for Albanians party demanded that the Justice Minister, the Deputy Justice Minister and all involved in the initiative resign.