YEREVAN. – Armenia’s opposition Heritage Party issued a statement in connection with the extradition of the life-sentenced murderer Ramil Safarov from Hungary to Azerbaijan and with the regional and international developments generated by this move.

“As a result of extraditing the life-sentenced criminal Ramil Safarov from Hungary to Azerbaijan, the Azerbaijani president got the chance and deliberately ceased the administration of justice towards a notorious criminal. The step taken by Ilham Aliyev is unlawful in essence, it is a provocation threatening to regional stability and is an expression of fanatic enmity and hatred towards Armenians.

The country led by a president giving that sample of unlawful, provocative and xenophobic conduct cannot be considered a bearer of values declared by the United Nations and take a seat at UN Security Council. The Heritage Party considers that Armenia and especially the Hungary must raise the issues of expelling the Azerbaijan from the UN Security Council and transmitting Ramil Safarov to the Hague International Court at the UN General Assembly.

The Heritage Party values the responses of all international structures, governments and leaders who condemned the illegitimate and willful misconduct of Azerbaijani President. We also regret that some other players at international scene simply called the both parties to pursue quietude—demonstrating a superficial approach to the problem. Still in both cases an insufficient attention was paid to anti-democratic and corrupted essence of Azerbaijani statehood revealed in full nudity.

According to some publications in Hungary the Azerbaijan had offered 2-3 billion dollars veiled bribe to Budapest for extraditing Safarov. If a President may dismiss the needs of millions of citizens, including the refugees, and entitle himself to waste three billion dollars to make his crazy longing become true then it’s a thorough proof of absence of state order in the country.

The Heritage Party invites her sister-parties within EPP and especially the governing Fidesh party of Hungary, as well as the Governments of EU countries to attach attention to this unveiled reality and assumes there’s a ground to discuss the suspension of EU Association Agreement negotiations with Azerbaijan, until a control over the budget and an end to the arbitrariness of the leaders will be established in that country. 

Regretfully since the 1988 pogroms in Sumgait the anti-Armenian lunacy in Azerbaijan rarely attracted that much international attention and had that illustrative expression as the developments around the Safarov case did. The Heritage Party considers that the emerged situation is an appropriate ground to introduce the core essence of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict to the new generation entered to political-diplomatic circles, to reinstate the necessity of engaging the NKR representatives into the Minsk group peace negotiations and to argue the imperativeness of recognizing the independence of Nagorno Karabakh.

At the same time under the light of the ongoing developments the Heritage party considers rightful for the Armenian Parliament to discuss and recognize the independence of Nagorno-Karabakh first and therefore proposed the relating bill at National Assembly,” Heritage Party’s statement reads.