The Canadian-Armenian youth organizations gathered in Ottawa Friday to hold protests in front of the Hungarian and Azerbaijani embassies and in connection with Hungary’s extradition of Ramil Safarov to Azerbaijan and his subsequent pardon and promotion in military rank, the Armenian Youth Federation of Canada informs.    

The demonstrators raised their voices against this perilous precedent which Hungary and Azerbaijan have set. Also, the protesters condemned the fact that Safarov is considered a national hero in Azerbaijan, and demanded from Azerbaijan to end its racist, anti-Armenian, and belligerent rhetoric.  

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.