MEP: Azerbaijan presents murderer as a role model to cheering children

September 5, 2012 - 17:28 AMT

PanARMENIAN.Net - MEP Elmar Brok, Chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee of the European Parliament, has criticized the decision by Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev to pardon Ramil Safarov, who has confessed to the murder of an Armenian soldier in Hungary in 2004.

Mr Brok commented: "I am deeply concerned about the decision to pardon Ramil Safarov upon arrival in Baku, to publicly glorify him, promote him to Major rank, pay him 8 years of salary and offer him an apartment. Azerbaijan had given a written promise to the Hungarian authorities that Mr Safarov would continue to serve his life sentence for at least 25 years when he arrives in Azerbaijan. Now Azerbaijan has broken this promise. Safarov is an Azerbaijani soldier who murdered the Armenian officer Gurgen Margaryan at their NATO training camp in Budapest in 2004. With the decision to set him free, Azerbaijan is circumventing the valid conviction of the court of an EU Member State and is presenting a murderer as a role model to cheering children in Baku."

Gurgen Margaryan

On February 19, 2004, Lieutenant of the Armenian Armed Forces Gurgen Margaryan, 26, was hacked to death, while asleep, by a fellow Azerbaijani participant, lieutenant Ramil Safarov, in Budapest during a three-month English language course in the framework of Partnership for Peace NATO-sponsored program. In accordance with Budapest District Court sentence dated April 13, 2006, Ramil Safarov was life imprisoned for murdering the Armenian officer.

On February 22, 2007, Budapest Court rejected the Azerbaijani military officer's appeal against a life sentence. The appeal court ruled that the decision brought by Budapest District Court against 30-year-old Lieutenant Ramil Safarov, should stand.

On August 31, 2012, Hungary extradited Safarov back to Azerbaijan, where he was promptly pardoned by President Ilham Aliyev.