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Armenia Cuts Links With Hungary After Axe-Killer Pardon

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  • Armenia Cuts Links With Hungary After Axe-Killer Pardon

    ARMENIA CUTS LINKS WITH HUNGARY AFTER AXE-KILLER PARDON

    Focus News
    Aug 31 2012
    ulgaria

    Yerevan. Armenia severed diplomatic links with Hungary on Friday
    after Budapest extradited an Azerbaijani soldier who axed to death
    an Armenian serviceman to Baku, where he was immediately pardoned,
    AFP reported.

    "With their joint actions, Azerbaijan and Hungary opened the door to
    the recurrence of such crimes," Armenian President Serzh Sarkisian
    said in comments release by his press service.

    "I cannot put up with this. The republic of Armenia cannot put up
    with this," he said.

    Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev issued an order that killer Ramil
    Safarov "should be freed from the term of his punishment" directly
    after he arrived on a plane from Budapest on Friday where he had been
    serving a life sentence for the murder in 2004.

    Sarkisian said he had put his troops on "high alert" after the incident
    which has inflamed tensions between the enemies who fought a war over
    the disputed region of Nagorny Karabakh in the 1990s.

    Sarkisian told an emergency meeting of his national security council
    that Hungary had made a "grave mistake" in extraditing the prisoner.

    "This is not a simple murder. It is murder on ethnic grounds," he said.

    Safarov hacked Armenian officer Gurgen Margarian to death with an
    axe in 2004 at a military academy in Budapest where the servicemen
    from the ex-Soviet neighbour states were attending English-language
    courses organised by NATO.

    His lawyers claimed in court that he was traumatised because some
    of his relatives were killed during the war with Armenian forces and
    alleged that Margarian had insulted his country.

    "I want to express my appreciation and gratitude to the president
    and commander-in-chief Ilham Aliyev for this humane move," Safarov
    was reported as saying by Azerbaijani media after being greeted as
    a hero when he arrived in Baku on a special flight.

    Safarov then visited a memorial to those killed in the war accompanied
    by a crowd of supporters who chanted slogans such as "We'll liberate
    Karabakh".

    Angry Armenian protesters meanwhile threw tomatoes at the Hungarian
    embassy in Yerevan.

    Armenia-backed separatists seized Nagorny Karabakh from Azerbaijan
    in the war that left some 30,000 people dead, and despite years of
    negotiations since a 1994 ceasefire, the two sides have not signed
    a final peace deal.

    Azerbaijan has threatened to take back the region by force if peace
    talks do not yield results, while Armenia has vowed massive retaliation
    against any military action.

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