YEREVAN. – The National Academy of Sciences (NAS) of Armenia issued a statement addressed to the Academy of Sciences of Hungary and to the country’s academia, in connection with Hungarian authorities’ extradition of Ramil Safarov to Azerbaijan, NAS Information and Analytical Center informed Armenian News-NEWS.am. 

“Based on the actions by Hungary’s incumbent government, the National Academy of Sciences is compelled to suspend its relations with the Academy of Sciences of Hungary.  

The arrangement, which the authorities of—European Union- and NATO-member—Hungary reached with Azerbaijan, has shocked and deeply angered the Armenian scientists.   

We hope you will make your voice be heard by your authorities, [and] condemn and dispraise their arrangement,” the NAS statement reads in particular.    

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.