Prior to deciding to extradite Ramil Safarov, the Hungarian government should have launched formal or informal consultations between the MFAs of Hungary and Armenia, Ukraine’s First Ambassador to Armenia, Alexander Bozhko, told Analitika.at.ua.

“It wasn’t difficult to predict what reaction such step [that is, Safarov’s extradition] would have received in Armenia, even if [Azerbaijani president Ilham] Aliyev had not granted pardon to the murderer,” he noted. 

The diplomat added that, judging from everything, this matter was always present in the Armenian-Hungarian ties.

“Even if it’s necessary, such consultations are a universal diplomatic rule for information flow, which is often resorted to by the countries that consider one another friends and wish to maintain good relations.  

That’s why the Hungarian MFA’s arguments—that as if Hungary was pushed toward extraditing the murderer—toward receiving assurances from the Azerbaijani side for its readiness to carry out the international convention seem unconvincing, if not bizarre,” stated Alexander Bozhko.     

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.