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ISTANBUL: Azerbaijan Pardons, Frees Convicted Officer

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  • ISTANBUL: Azerbaijan Pardons, Frees Convicted Officer

    AZERBAIJAN PARDONS, FREES CONVICTED OFFICER

    Today's Zaman
    Aug 31 2012
    Turkey

    An Azerbaijani military officer sentenced to life in prison in Hungary
    for hacking to death an Armenian officer was sent back to his homeland
    on Friday and, despite assurances, immediately pardoned and freed by
    his country's president.

    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.

    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.

    During his trial in Budapest, Safarov claimed that a long-standing
    conflict between Azerbaijan and Armenia 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.

    The two neighboring, former Soviet republics remain at odds over
    the status of Nagorno-Karabakh, an ethnic Armenian enclave within
    Azerbaijan.

    "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.


    From: Baghdasarian
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