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  • Azerbaijan Pardons, Frees Convicted Killer

    AZERBAIJAN PARDONS, FREES CONVICTED KILLER

    News Sentinel
    http://www.news-sentinel.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20120831/AP01/308319923/-1/LIVING
    Aug 31 2012

    BUDAPEST, Hungary (AP) - Armenia broke off diplomatic ties with Hungary
    after an Azerbaijani military officer sentenced to life in prison
    here for killing an Armenian officer was sent back to his homeland
    on Friday and, despite assurances, immediately pardoned and freed.

    Lt. Ramil Safarov was given a life sentence in 2006 by the Budapest
    City Court after he confessed to killing Lt. Gurgen Markarian of
    Armenia while both were in Hungary for a 2004 NATO language course.

    Azerbaijan and Armenia are ex-Soviet neighbors who have been
    locked in a long-standing conflict over the mountainous territory
    of Nagorno-Karabakh.

    In response to Safarov's release, Armenian President Serge Sarkisian
    said his country was cutting diplomatic ties with Hungary, while
    Hungarian state news agency MTI reported that protesters in the
    Armenian capital of Yerevan threw tomatoes at the building housing
    Hungary's honorary consulate and the tore down the Hungarian flag.

    Sarkisian said Armenia was "halting diplomatic relations and all
    official ties with Hungary."

    The White House also criticized the decision to free Safarov.

    "President Obama is deeply concerned by today's announcement that
    the President of Azerbaijan has pardoned Ramil Safarov following
    his return from Hungary," said a statement from National Security
    Council Spokesman Tommy Vietor. "We are communicating to Azerbaijani
    authorities our disappointment about the decision to pardon Safarov.

    This action is contrary to ongoing efforts to reduce regional tensions
    and promote reconciliation."

    Vietor added that Hungary was also being asked to explain its decision
    to send Safarov home.

    While Armenians were livid over Safarov's release, he is considered
    a hero by many in Azerbaijan for having killed an Armenian.

    Hungary returned the 35-year-old Safarov to Azerbaijan only after
    receiving assurances from the Azerbaijani Justice Ministry that
    Safarov's sentence, which included the possibility of parole after
    25 years, would be enforced.

    "The Ministry of Justice of Azerbaijan has further informed the
    Ministry of Public Administration and Justice of Hungary that Ramil
    Sahib Safarov's sentence will not be modified but will immediately
    continue to be enforced, based on the Hungarian judgment," the
    Hungarian ministry said in a statement issued before the news of
    Safarov's release was known.

    The ministry said it based its decision on the 1983 Strasbourg
    Convention on the Transfer of Sentenced Persons.

    In a brief statement posted in English on his website, Azerbaijani
    President Ilham Aliyev decreed Friday that Safarov "should be freed
    from the term of his punishment."

    Hungary's Justice Ministry did not immediately respond to a request
    for comment on Safarov's release.

    Hungary, which depends on Russia for most of its energy imports, has
    been seeking to expand its economic relations with oil-rich Azerbaijan.

    Laszlo Borbely, the deputy director of Hungary's Government Debt
    Management Agency last week told daily newspaper Magyar Nemzet that
    talks between the two countries about a possible purchase by Azerbaijan
    of up to 3 billion euros ($3.77 billion) in Hungarian bonds were only
    at an "exploratory phase" for now.

    Nagorno-Karabakh lies within Azerbaijan, but has remained under
    the control of Armenian troops and ethnic Armenian forces since
    the end of a six-year separatist war in 1994. Diplomatic efforts
    to settle the conflict have brought no result, and shootings on the
    Armenian-Azerbaijani border have been common.

    During his trial in Budapest, Safarov claimed that the conflict was
    at the root of his actions and that he used an ax to kill Markarian
    while the victim was sleeping in a dormitory room after the Armenian
    repeatedly provoked and ridiculed him.

    "My conscience was clouded as a result of the insults and humiliating
    and provoking behavior, and I lost all control," Safarov told the
    court in April 2006.

    Armenian-backed forces drove Azerbaijan's army out of the ethnic
    Armenian enclave of Nagorno-Karabakh in the early 1990s. A 1994
    cease-fire ended the six-year war that killed 30,000 people and left
    about 1 million homeless and the enclave is now under the control of
    ethnic Armenians.

    Safarov's lawyers said that his parents and relatives were exiled
    from Nagorno-Karabakh during the war and that two of his relatives
    were killed by ethnic Armenian separatists.

    ___

    Aida Sultanova in Baku, Azerbaijan, contributed to this report.



    From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress
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