BUDAPEST. – The decision to transfer Ramil Safarov back to his home country, Azerbaijan, was a collective government one, and all involved bear responsibility for it, Hungarian Foreign Minister Janos Martonyi told lawmakers on Wednesday.

He said Hungary “willingly or unwillingly” had gotten entangled in the Azerbaijani-Armenian conflict.

Martonyi firmly rejected allegations that there had been any backdoor agreement concluded between Hungary and Azerbaijan, politics.hu website of Hungary reports.

In his words, the Azeri authorities had made a clear commitment to continuing the murderer’s prison sentence and the Hungarian government had taken its assurances at face value. Cooperation works on the basis of good faith, he said, adding that the Azerbaijani side had reneged on the agreement.

The Hungarian government’s decision to repatriate Safarov had been “painful” and “not easy,” he said, referring to the long-standing good relations with Armenia and its minority community living in Hungary.

The Hungarian FM also said the task now was to try to diffuse the strong emotions which have arisen since Safarov’s release. All means must be used to ensure that tensions between Azerbaijan and Armenia do not escalate, he said.

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.