YEREVAN. – Armenia is considering applying to the ECHR Grand Chamber to hold Hungary accountable. Lawyer Siranush Sahakyan stated this at a press conference Tuesday, referring to the decision of the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) in the case on the murder of Armenian officer Gurgen Margaryan.

She recalled that after being extradited to his homeland Azerbaijan and receiving the title of hero there, Margaryan’s murderer went unpunished. In this regard, the Armenian side has initiated a process of holding Azerbaijan accountable. Unfortunately, according to the lawyer, the incident in Budapest remained at the level of a private crime. According to the lawyer, the ECHR decision is satisfactory and the violations have been confirmed.

"Unfortunately, the fact of violations by Hungary has not been confirmed. We do not rule out that we will apply to the Grand Chamber to hold Hungary accountable. Violation of the right to life and the ethnically motivated actions have been confirmed. This is the first decision in history when the international court confirms Azerbaijan's anti-Armenian actions. Steps must also be taken for the offender to be punished," Sahakyan added.

He confirmed the link of political processes with the settlement of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict. "We hope that the political team will be able to make use of the political consequences of this decision," she said.

Returning to Hungary’s actions, the lawyer noted that it was Budapest's actions that allowed Azerbaijan to keep the murderer unpunished.

As reported earlier, Ramil Safarov, a lieutenant in the Azerbaijani military, was extradited on August 31, 2012, 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.