WASHINGTON, D.C. – The Armenian National Committee of America (ANCA) released an action alert on Friday, after the publication of reports that Safarov, who killed the Armenian serviceman Gurgen Margaryan in the latter’s sleep Hungary, has been extradited and has received a hero’s welcome in Baku.
“Tell Hungary’s Ambassador that you are profoundly troubled by their immoral and ill-advised decision to extradite (release) Ramil Safarov, the unrepentant axe-murderer who killed Armenian lieutenant Gurgen Margaryan, in his sleep, during a 2004 NATO training exercise. (Azerbaijan’s President Ilham Aliyev immediate pardoned and freed Safarov upon his arrival in Baku.),” ANCA says.
The ANCA urges to call, email, or post your thoughts explaining that this grave injustice compromises Hungary’s international standing.
The ANCA has written a letter to the US President Obama as well:
August 31, 2012
The Honorable Barack Obama
President of the United States
The White House
1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW
Washington, D.C. 20500
Dear Mr. President:
I am writing, in the spirit of your June 18, 2012 joint statement with the leaders of Russia and France, about the peaceful settlement of Nagorno Karabakh, to call upon you to condemn Azerbaijan’s release of Ramil Safarov, a lieutenant in the Azerbaijani military who was recent extradited from Hungary, where he was serving a life sentence—with no expression of either regret or remorse—for the pre-meditated axe murder of Armenian lieutenant Gurgen Margaryan, in his sleep, during a NATO Partnership for Peace program.
As expected, Safarov’s return to Baku was welcomed, as was his act of murder, by officials of Ilham Aliyev’s government and much of Azerbaijani society. The Azerbaijani government apparently had committed to Hungary that they would continue his prison term; yet, Aliyev immediately pardoned him.
The facts of this brutal murder are as clear as the imperative for our government, which serves as a mediator of this conflict through the Minsk Group of the OSCE, to publicly criticize Hungary’s extradition of a known and unapologetic terrorist, to openly condemn Baku’s subsequent release of Safarov, and to demand his immediate re-incarceration for the remainder of his life sentence. A lack of a forceful American response to this grave injustice would, in addition to compromising our nation’s moral standing, undermine prospects for peace by emboldening an increasingly heavily armed Azerbaijani government to continue inciting its own citizens to violence, and encouraging it to continue its threats and actual acts of aggression.
I would like to also use this opportunity, to once again, request that you hold a personal meeting with the broad-based leadership of the Armenian American community. As I have written to you in the past, the absence of direct discussions between you and your Armenian American constituents, a dialogue you pledged as a candidate to undertake, is unhealthy both for our democracy as well as for our diplomacy,” reads the letter.
To note, the Azerbaijani President Ilham Alitev issued an amnesty Ramil Safarov being extradited by Hungary, who had axed sleeping Armenian serviceman Gurgen Margaryan. The cruel murderer was met as a hero on state level.
