YEREVAN. – Azerbaijan broke faith and behaved in an appalling way by making a hero of Ramil Safarov, Baroness Caroline Cox said.
“We must never forget that the Armenian army officer was murdered in his sleep,” she said during the opening ceremony of a monument to slain officer Gurgen Margaryan.
Baroness Cox said she was deeply shocked when Azerbaijan celebrated the murderer as a hero.
“I am very worried by the massage that it gives to a younger generation in Azerbaijan, if they are taught to treat a murderer as a hero.”
Caroline Cox recalled that Ramil Safarov got a life sentence in Hungary.
“I do not know why he was sent back to Azerbaijan, but I think Azerbaijan promised he would continue his sentence in prison.”
As reported earlier, Ramil Safarov, a then-lieutenant in the Azerbaijani military, was extradited on August 31, 2012 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. Safarov had planned on killing the other Armenian military serviceman, who likewise was attending the aforesaid program, but he was unable to carry out this plan.
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, he was declared a national hero, promoted to a higher military rank, and was allocated housing and pension.
And Armenia’s President Serzh Sargsyan announced on August 31, 2012 that Armenia is suspending its diplomatic ties with Hungary. Also, Sargsyan instructed the Ministry of Justice to take all measures to petition to the international judicial tribunals, and with respect to the Safarov case.
Ramil Safarov’s pardoning was condemned by virtually all international organizations.
The Armenian party had applied to ECtHR in February, in connection with the Ramil Safarov case. The complaint is with respect to Articles 2 and 14 of the European Convention on Human Rights. Armenian and foreign specialists are included in the working group that is preparing the complaint.
