PARIS. – Hundreds gathered in Paris for a demonstration Thursday in front of the Hungarian Embassy in France, and they protested Hungary’s extradition of Ramil Safarov to Azerbaijan and his subsequent pardoning, informs, Nouvelles d’Arménie monthly of France reports.     

The demonstrators condemned official Budapest’s policy and chanted “Justice is disregarded, the murderer is free!”

Michèle Rivasi, a European Parliament member who represents France’s Europe Écologie—The Greens—, likewise participated in the demonstration and stated that both Hungary and Azerbaijan must give an explanation for their 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.