Ramil Safarov killed Gurgen Margaryan because the latter had “smiled at him,” Safarov himself told during a program of “Russia 1” television.

“The [Azerbaijani] army had sent me [to Budapest] for [English-language] courses. There were two Armenians with us. They were saluting, saying ‘hi’ in the beginning, but I wasn’t answering them. One time they were passing beside me, speaking in Armenian, and they smiled at me. At that moment I decided to kill them, to cut off their heads,” Safarov commented.     

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.    

Ramil Safarov’s pardoning is condemned by virtually all international organizations.