The case of Ramil Safarov is a real challenge to the values that we uphold within Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe, PACE head said.

Opening the PACE autumn session on Monday, President Jean Claude Mignon said the case deserves to be discussed within the Assembly, organization’s website said.

“What underpins our political model is the unity of the values and standards that we have undertaken to promote. Our co-operation is based on mutual trust and good faith. This is why the Safarov case, in my view, constitutes a real challenge to the values that we uphold within this Organisation.

Consequently, this subject deserves to be discussed within this Assembly. Glorification of the heinous crime committed by Mr Safarov is unacceptable, and I deeply regret the obtaining of a pardon for a criminal through the use of a legal instrument of the Council of Europe developed for truly “humanistic” purposes,” he said.

Adopting the agenda of its autumn plenary session this morning, PACE decided to hold a current affairs debate on “The Safarov case” on October 4. 

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.