President Ján Slota of the Slovak National Party, which is Slovakia’s leading nationalist party, issued a letter to Chairman Ashot Grigoryan of the Forum of Armenian Associations of Europe, who also heads Slovakia’s Armenian community, and expressed his party’s resentment over Hungary’s extradition of Ramil Safarov to Azerbaijan.    

“This dreadful move runs counter to all international and legal commitments,” Slota noted. 

In his words, such action is impermissible even from the Christian point of view.

“Murder and the criminal’s extradition could cause growing intercultural and interreligious disagreements and support Muslim extremists. In this connection, the Hungarian government’s shameful hypocrisy is apparent,” Ján Slota stated in his letter.    

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.