Granting pardon to a criminal who is sentenced to life is totally unacceptable, French National Assembly member and Armenia-France Interparliamentary Group Chairman François Rochebloine told Armenian News-NEWS.am, commenting on the Hungarian government’s extradition of Ramil Safarov to Azerbaijan, where he was immediately granted pardon by the country’s president.   

Rochebloine said he is informed of the Armenian President’s decision to suspend diplomatic relations with Hungary over this incident.

“Armenian President’s decision is correct from the diplomatic point of view. Pardoning the criminal is impermissible; this will create future complications between both countries,” he noted.   

In response to the query as to the French MPs’ approach to this development, François Rochebloine stated that those MPs who are informed of this incident fully support the position of Armenia.  

As Armenian News-NEWS.am reported earlier, Armenia’s President Serzh Sargsyan convened, on Friday evening, a special consultation with the chiefs of diplomatic missions of UN-member states that are accredited in Armenia, and the heads of international organizations that function in the country. During the meeting it was informed that Armenia decided to suspend its diplomatic relations with Hungary for the latter’s extradition of Ramil Safarov to Azerbaijan. 

Ramil Safarov, a lieutenant in the Azerbaijani military, was extradited on Friday 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.

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.