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ELKHAN SULEYMANOV: "PACE LEGAL AFFAIRS COMMITTEE CONFIRMS THAT THE PARDONING OF RAMIL SAFAROV IS IN FULL COMPLIANCE WITH INTERNATIONAL LEGISLATION" - INTERVIEW
MilAz.info
Sept 7 2012
Azerbaijan
On Thursday September 6th 2012, on request of the Bureau of the
Assembly, the PACE's Legal Affairs Committee had an exchange of views
on the case of Ramil Safarov, at the end of their meeting in Paris.
Elkhan Suleymanov, the member of azerbaijani delegation to PACE,
head of the Azerbaijani delegation at the Euronest Parliamentary
Assembly told APA on this issue.
- "Was it a tough debate to convince the members that the extradition
and the pardoning are not violating international legislation?"
The head The Committee confirmed that the extradition of Ramil
Safarov from Hungary to Azerbaijan, as well as his pardoning by
President Ilham Aliyev are in full compliance with international
and national legislation. Chairman of the Committee declared that he
obtained legal advice from different sides, all confirming that the
extradition as well as the pardoning was not in violation with the
European Convention on the Transfer of Sentenced Persons. Mr Safarov
was pardoned in full accordance with Article 12 of the above-mentioned
Convention which allows explicitly any member country to grant pardon
of sentence in such a case. So the debate shifted to personal and
emotional remarks by Armenians and some other member. Of course I
reacted on those remarks in my speech, stressing that in a Legal
Affairs Committee the matter should be considered from an objective
legal aspect, not from a subjective emotional one.
- Facts happened in Hungary already more than eight years ago. What
is to your opinion the real reason for Armenians to make such a big
drama today in international media?
It's clear that Armenians have the only goal to consolidate their
illegal presence in the occupied territories and to reject the demand
of all international organizations, such as the United Nations and the
European Union, to witdraw their armed forces unconditionally from
these territories. By fabricating this dramatic window-dressing,
they only aim at that consolidation of the actual situation in
Nagorno-Karabakh.
-May I remind you that Armenia never admitted that they are illegally
occupying a part of Azerbaijan...
-That is no longer true. During the debate on Tuesday in the Monitoring
committee, Davit Harutyunyan, Armenian MP got so nervous about the
draft report and about our arguments that he insisted on correcting
the draft report where it mentions that 20 % of Azerbaijan is under
Armenian occupation. He insisted that it would read that only 15 %
is under Armenian occupation, as if the exact percentage makes any
difference. He also admitted that 700 thousand but not 1 million
Azerbaijanis were forced to leave their home and to be refugees in
their own country. In the same way some experts claim that Hitler
killed only 4 million Jews, and not 6 million, and for this reason
after all he is not such a bad guy...That is of course ridiculous. So
yes, this Armenian MP confessed publicly that Armenia is illegally
occupying a neighbor member state of the Council of Europe. By the way,
I immediately expressed my deep disappointment to the committee members
because they all kept silent confronted to the Armenian confession
of this sad reality.
-So, to your opinion, the PACE should be more active in this field?
-Of course! How can you in a credible way deal with human rights,
rule of law and good neigbourship if you can even not enforce the
implementation of international resolutions to a member state who is
occupying another member state? The Bureau of PACE, being well aware
of this problem, instructed a subcommittee on Nagorno-Karabakh to keep
up the dialogue and to develop possible solutions. But precisely the
Armenians never showed up to any meeting during last 2 years. During
this week's debates the Spanish chairman of that subcommittee publicly
expressed his regret and his concern about this ongoing negative
Armenian attitude. Yet they were never sanctioned. On the other hand
it is becoming more and clearer to all observers that Armenians only
aim at a status-quo, that they don't sincerely look for a solution,
and for sure they don't want to comply with the existing international
resolutions. And to my opinion, the incident of Ramil Safarov as well
as so many other unfortunate incidents such as the continuous killing
of Azerbaijani civilians by Armenian snipers, which don't get any
international media attention, are the result of the non-implementation
by Armenia of these resolutions.
-Were these killings of Azerbaijani civilians also raised in the
Committee?
-Today I have informed the PACE's Committee that, according official
data, during first 5 years of the conflict 1250 Azerbaijani civilians
were killed and 1283 injured by Armenians, in many cases by snipers.
65 civilians were missed. And this process continues. I stressed that
we have of course also regularly tabled our complaints about those
brutal killings before the Council of Europe, European Parliament and
other international organizations (UN, OSCE, etc), but to our regret
we only remember their complete silence, as well as the silence in
international media. Whereas the Azerbaijani lieutenant Ramil Safarov
spent more than eight years in prison, not one single Armenian was
ever prosecuted for killing thousands of Azerbaijani civilians since
twenty years. The international community never condemned this Armenian
violence and even remained totally indifferent to any Azerbaijani
complaint in this regard.
-You mentioned earlier the debate in the Monitoring Committee with
regard to a draft report on Azerbaijan. Is this report acceptable
for you?
- The monitoring report itself covers development in all related
fields for the period of last 4 years. The most important is that the
document for the first time in the history of PACE stresses reality
of non-resolution of the Nagorno - Karabakh conflict, criticizes
invalidity of the OSCE's Minsk Group, Iran's threat against existence
of independent Azerbaijan, geopolitical reality of the entire region
and local people's expectation from Europe in this regard. Together
with our Azerbaijani delegation leader, Samad Seyidov, MP, I took the
floor to give my first comments. The report is a very comprehensive
document, and I do appreciate that it is mostly based on facts
and figures, and is also referring to those data, even when several
elements to my opinion absolutely need to be corrected. In this regard,
I mentioned a few paragraphs that are at this stage not, or not fully,
in accordance with reality and need detailed investigation.
We will for sure use the next weeks and months to send to the reporters
several proposals, in order to include them in the report according
the procedure.
-It was quite a busy week for you in Paris, defending Azerbaijani
interests in different committees of PACE. But what about the European
Parliament and the Euronest Parliamentary Assembly, in which you are
the head of the Azerbaijani delegation? Are they concerned by this
Safarov case ?
-Yes, this week in Paris was really challenging, but together
with my colleagues - our delegation leader, Samad Seyidov, MP, and
Rafael Huseynov, MP, we did our best efforts for represent people
of Azerbaijan and defend their interests in the PACE by standing
against some attacks. Facing to the European Parliament agenda, I
would recall that after different statements were recently made by
European politicians with regard to Safarov, Azerbaijan Delegation to
the EURONEST PA have of course immediately addressed the President of
the European Parliament, Leaders of Political Groups, Members of the
European Parliament, Co-chairs of EURONEST Parliamentary Assembly,
Members of EURONEST from Eastern Partnership countries in an official
letter, in order to clarify and to defend the Azerbaijani position.
This letter was send yesterday.
-Mr. Suleymanov, what is your personal conclusion to all this
commotion?
-As I told the members of the Legal Affairs Committee today: despite
the fact that our religions are different, people on the Earth have
all a common God. I invite all decision makers to support fairness
and justice, and to stop any double standard or decimation.
http://milaz.info/en/news.php?id=8375
MilAz.info
Sept 7 2012
Azerbaijan
On Thursday September 6th 2012, on request of the Bureau of the
Assembly, the PACE's Legal Affairs Committee had an exchange of views
on the case of Ramil Safarov, at the end of their meeting in Paris.
Elkhan Suleymanov, the member of azerbaijani delegation to PACE,
head of the Azerbaijani delegation at the Euronest Parliamentary
Assembly told APA on this issue.
- "Was it a tough debate to convince the members that the extradition
and the pardoning are not violating international legislation?"
The head The Committee confirmed that the extradition of Ramil
Safarov from Hungary to Azerbaijan, as well as his pardoning by
President Ilham Aliyev are in full compliance with international
and national legislation. Chairman of the Committee declared that he
obtained legal advice from different sides, all confirming that the
extradition as well as the pardoning was not in violation with the
European Convention on the Transfer of Sentenced Persons. Mr Safarov
was pardoned in full accordance with Article 12 of the above-mentioned
Convention which allows explicitly any member country to grant pardon
of sentence in such a case. So the debate shifted to personal and
emotional remarks by Armenians and some other member. Of course I
reacted on those remarks in my speech, stressing that in a Legal
Affairs Committee the matter should be considered from an objective
legal aspect, not from a subjective emotional one.
- Facts happened in Hungary already more than eight years ago. What
is to your opinion the real reason for Armenians to make such a big
drama today in international media?
It's clear that Armenians have the only goal to consolidate their
illegal presence in the occupied territories and to reject the demand
of all international organizations, such as the United Nations and the
European Union, to witdraw their armed forces unconditionally from
these territories. By fabricating this dramatic window-dressing,
they only aim at that consolidation of the actual situation in
Nagorno-Karabakh.
-May I remind you that Armenia never admitted that they are illegally
occupying a part of Azerbaijan...
-That is no longer true. During the debate on Tuesday in the Monitoring
committee, Davit Harutyunyan, Armenian MP got so nervous about the
draft report and about our arguments that he insisted on correcting
the draft report where it mentions that 20 % of Azerbaijan is under
Armenian occupation. He insisted that it would read that only 15 %
is under Armenian occupation, as if the exact percentage makes any
difference. He also admitted that 700 thousand but not 1 million
Azerbaijanis were forced to leave their home and to be refugees in
their own country. In the same way some experts claim that Hitler
killed only 4 million Jews, and not 6 million, and for this reason
after all he is not such a bad guy...That is of course ridiculous. So
yes, this Armenian MP confessed publicly that Armenia is illegally
occupying a neighbor member state of the Council of Europe. By the way,
I immediately expressed my deep disappointment to the committee members
because they all kept silent confronted to the Armenian confession
of this sad reality.
-So, to your opinion, the PACE should be more active in this field?
-Of course! How can you in a credible way deal with human rights,
rule of law and good neigbourship if you can even not enforce the
implementation of international resolutions to a member state who is
occupying another member state? The Bureau of PACE, being well aware
of this problem, instructed a subcommittee on Nagorno-Karabakh to keep
up the dialogue and to develop possible solutions. But precisely the
Armenians never showed up to any meeting during last 2 years. During
this week's debates the Spanish chairman of that subcommittee publicly
expressed his regret and his concern about this ongoing negative
Armenian attitude. Yet they were never sanctioned. On the other hand
it is becoming more and clearer to all observers that Armenians only
aim at a status-quo, that they don't sincerely look for a solution,
and for sure they don't want to comply with the existing international
resolutions. And to my opinion, the incident of Ramil Safarov as well
as so many other unfortunate incidents such as the continuous killing
of Azerbaijani civilians by Armenian snipers, which don't get any
international media attention, are the result of the non-implementation
by Armenia of these resolutions.
-Were these killings of Azerbaijani civilians also raised in the
Committee?
-Today I have informed the PACE's Committee that, according official
data, during first 5 years of the conflict 1250 Azerbaijani civilians
were killed and 1283 injured by Armenians, in many cases by snipers.
65 civilians were missed. And this process continues. I stressed that
we have of course also regularly tabled our complaints about those
brutal killings before the Council of Europe, European Parliament and
other international organizations (UN, OSCE, etc), but to our regret
we only remember their complete silence, as well as the silence in
international media. Whereas the Azerbaijani lieutenant Ramil Safarov
spent more than eight years in prison, not one single Armenian was
ever prosecuted for killing thousands of Azerbaijani civilians since
twenty years. The international community never condemned this Armenian
violence and even remained totally indifferent to any Azerbaijani
complaint in this regard.
-You mentioned earlier the debate in the Monitoring Committee with
regard to a draft report on Azerbaijan. Is this report acceptable
for you?
- The monitoring report itself covers development in all related
fields for the period of last 4 years. The most important is that the
document for the first time in the history of PACE stresses reality
of non-resolution of the Nagorno - Karabakh conflict, criticizes
invalidity of the OSCE's Minsk Group, Iran's threat against existence
of independent Azerbaijan, geopolitical reality of the entire region
and local people's expectation from Europe in this regard. Together
with our Azerbaijani delegation leader, Samad Seyidov, MP, I took the
floor to give my first comments. The report is a very comprehensive
document, and I do appreciate that it is mostly based on facts
and figures, and is also referring to those data, even when several
elements to my opinion absolutely need to be corrected. In this regard,
I mentioned a few paragraphs that are at this stage not, or not fully,
in accordance with reality and need detailed investigation.
We will for sure use the next weeks and months to send to the reporters
several proposals, in order to include them in the report according
the procedure.
-It was quite a busy week for you in Paris, defending Azerbaijani
interests in different committees of PACE. But what about the European
Parliament and the Euronest Parliamentary Assembly, in which you are
the head of the Azerbaijani delegation? Are they concerned by this
Safarov case ?
-Yes, this week in Paris was really challenging, but together
with my colleagues - our delegation leader, Samad Seyidov, MP, and
Rafael Huseynov, MP, we did our best efforts for represent people
of Azerbaijan and defend their interests in the PACE by standing
against some attacks. Facing to the European Parliament agenda, I
would recall that after different statements were recently made by
European politicians with regard to Safarov, Azerbaijan Delegation to
the EURONEST PA have of course immediately addressed the President of
the European Parliament, Leaders of Political Groups, Members of the
European Parliament, Co-chairs of EURONEST Parliamentary Assembly,
Members of EURONEST from Eastern Partnership countries in an official
letter, in order to clarify and to defend the Azerbaijani position.
This letter was send yesterday.
-Mr. Suleymanov, what is your personal conclusion to all this
commotion?
-As I told the members of the Legal Affairs Committee today: despite
the fact that our religions are different, people on the Earth have
all a common God. I invite all decision makers to support fairness
and justice, and to stop any double standard or decimation.
http://milaz.info/en/news.php?id=8375