YEREVAN. – Armenian National Assembly (NA) Deputy Speaker and Lithuania-Armenia Parliamentary Friendship Group’s Armenian Co-Chair Eduard Sharmazanov had a telephonic conversation with the Group’s Lithuanian Co-Chair Algis Kaseta.

Sharmazanov appreciated several Lithuanian Seimas (Parliament) MPs’ statement addressed to the international community, and with respect to the Azerbaijani president’s granting pardon to Ramil Safarov.  

The statement’s undersigned MPs have expressed their deep concern in this connection, NA Public and Media Relations Department informs.  

Also, the Seimas’ member group expressed a conviction that Safarov’s pardon could result in the repeat of such crimes, it contradicts with international norms, and could hamper the Nagorno-Karabakh peace talks being conducted between Armenia and Azerbaijan.

During the telephone conversation, NA Deputy Speaker noted that Armenia’s parliament highly appreciates its Lithuanian colleagues’ equivalent response, whereby they join that international community which condemned the Azerbaijani authorities’ unlawful actions.        

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.