The decision to extradite the Azerbaijani army officer to his country, and especially his pardon, has caused a wave of concern, Russian political Analyst Sergey Markedonov wrote in the Echo Kavkaza website.    

“The Hungarian government’s decision has put not only Budapest’s standing but also the western society under a serious jeopardy. It turns out that the Nagorno-Karabakh issue is taken seriously by words only. But, in reality, the non-Caucasus political scientists do not imagine how serious this conflict is considered by the societies of both countries.      

‘Safarov’s case’ showed how far [official] Baku and Yerevan are from the acknowledgement of making mutual concessions. The ‘patriotic advertisement,’ in the lead-up to next year’s presidential elections [in Armenia], evaporated all peacekeeping progress.

The ‘Safarov case’ certainly is not the death of the peace process, but, at the very least, it is a precondition for suspending the talks, and this [suspension] could be accompanied with new incidents at the ‘line of contact.’  

At the same time, questions must be addressed not solely to Baku and Yerevan, but also to the mediating countries, which must focus on finding ways to get out of this situation,” Sergey Markedonov noted.    

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.