BUDAPEST. – The Hungarian government’s decision to transfer Ramil Safarov to Azerbaijan was a “correct and right” decision, Prime Minister Viktor Orban told Parliament on Monday responding to critical remarks by Socialist MP Laszlo Kovacs.
Kovacs noted that both the foreign and the justice ministries had opposed the move, arguing that the murderer would be immediately released upon his repatriation, politics.hu of Hungary reports.
Orban said the government had made a correct and right decision that complied with the rules of international law and Hungary’s legal practice.
“We would have done the same if an Armenian had killed an Azerbaijani. Hungary should follow its own interests rather than those of Armenia or Azerbaijan,” he said.
Kovacs remarked that Hungary had “meddled” in the conflict of Azerbaijan and Armenia. The benefit of the decision is still unclear, he said.
In response, Orban said the decision had not been motivated by the promise of any short-term benefits. In the long term, however, it will have a benefit, the premier said. The Azerbaijani-Armenian conflict, he said, is expected to last for a while, but “Hungary has got out of it by transferring the Azerbaijani convict. As long as he was here, he caused plenty of conflicts and difficulties and the situation would not have changed in the future either,” Viktor Orban said.
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.
