A restricted document issued by the Hungarian Institute of International Affairs (MKI), leaked by news website nol.hu, indicates that Hungarian authorities were misled by Azerbaijan in connection with the handover of Ramil Safarov.
The document, according to nol.hu, stated that Hungary’s Prime Minister Viktor Orbán had met with Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev to discuss the repatriation of the prisoner. The president had promised him that the life-sentenced Ramil Safarov would be kept behind bars.
The report added that Azerbaijan had tried to give the false impression that there had been an agreement with Hungary on Safarov’s release.
“Azerbaijan is much more important to Hungary at the moment than vice versa,” the report said, adding that for this reason Budapest would not openly say that the Azerbaijani president had misled Orbán.
The also report said it was clear that relations between Hungary and Armenia would be icy for a period of time.
In the meantime, the Azerbaijani president’s Social and Political Affairs Department Head Ali Hasanov had stated that the Hungarian authorities knew about Safarov’s possible pardoning.
To note, the Hungarian authorities are attempting to show that they were “unaware” of such prospect, but Armenia does not believe in them.
Armenian News-NEWS.am reported earlier that Ramil Safarov, a lieutenant in the Azerbaijani military, was extradited on August 31 from Hungary, where he was serving a life sentence—and with no expression of either regret or remorse—for the premeditated axe murder of Armenian lieutenant Gurgen Margaryan, in his sleep, during a NATO Partnership for Peace program in Budapest back in 2004.
As expected, Ramil Safarov’s return to Baku was welcomed, as was his act of murder, by the officials of president Ilham Aliyev’s government and much of Azerbaijani society, and the Azerbaijani president immediately granted him a pardon.
And Armenia’s President Serzh Sargsyan announced on August 31 that Armenia is suspending its diplomatic ties with Hungary.
Ramil Safarov’s pardoning is condemned by virtually all international organizations.
