BUDAPEST. – Zsolt Németh, Parliamentary State Secretary of the Hungarian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, on Sunday met in Budapest with Azerbaijan’s Ambassador to Hungary, Vilayat Guliyev.

Németh informed the Azerbaijani ambassador about Hungary’s stance with respect to Azerbaijani president’s granting pardon to Ramil Safarov, Hungarian MFA informs.

Also, Hungary’s State Secretary handed the ambassador a diplomatic note whereby the Hungarian MFA expresses its concern that Safarov will not serve his sentence. 

To note, Hungary’s MNO Publishing House publicized the Azerbaijani Justice Ministry’s official document, dated August 15, 2012, and addressed to Hungary’s Justice Ministry, whereby Azerbaijan offers guarantees for carrying out all the conditions for Ramil Safarov’s extradition, and to the fact that he would continue serving his sentence in Azerbaijan and that he would be eligible for an early parole solely after serving at least twenty-five years of his sentence.    

This document is presented as proof to the Hungarian Justice Ministry’s earlier statement that Azerbaijan had misled its Hungarian counterpart by pledging that Safarov will continue to serve his sentence in his homeland and that his sentence could be commuted only by a court order.    

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.