YEREVAN. – Armenian Justice Minister Hrayr Tovmasyan wrote a letter to his Hungarian counterpart and expressed his deep indignation in connection to the extradition of Ramil Safarov to Azerbaijan. Armenian News-NEWS.am presents the letter in full:

“To the Minister of Administration and Justice of Hungary Tibor Navracsics

Dear Navracsics,

I received news about murderer Ramil Safarov’s extradition to Azerbaijan by the Ministry of Administration and Justice of Hungary with deep indignation and concern. The European values are universal and they include humanity and the 1983 Strasbourg Convention on the Transfer of Sentenced Persons provides the opportunity for criminal transfer based on humanity. However, other not less significant European values include also justice and inevitability of punishment. I am completely sure that you should have known what will happen with Safarov in Azerbaijan. You should have known that you transfer a person, having committed a murder based on motive of racial hostility, to a country where he is considered a hero. You must have known that the heroism is a slap first of all to the justice of Hungary and generally to the whole European value system.

Let me not believe in your honesty when you say that you were satisfied by some assurances of the Azerbaijani side.

You must have been assured by the Azerbaijani side that the murderer will continue his punishment in his country. Moreover, even if those assurances were given you should not have transferred Safarov to a country where he was made a hero by the Azerbaijani authorities for years.

I would have resigned in your place as a minister.

However, even in case of resignation, the family of Gurgen Margaryan, the Armenian people and the whole progressive humanity will remember you as the one having ‘justified’ the murderer.

Taking into account the aforesaid, as well as the statement by the Armenian President Serzh Sargsyan, the Ministry of Justice declares about breaking all the bilateral relations within the European Council and other international organizations with the Ministry of Administration and Justice of Hungary.

The Minister of Justice of Armenia Hrayr Tovmasyan."

To note, the murder had taken place in Budapest on Feb. 19, 2004, where two Armenian military servicemen were taking part in an English-language course organized by NATO’s Partnership for Peace program.

In 2006, the Budapest court sentenced the Azerbaijani killer to life in prison, and without a chance for pardon for thirty years. And the reason for the brutal murder was simply that Margaryan was Armenian.