‘Hungary Needs To Make Up For Controversial Prison Release’

‘HUNGARY NEEDS TO MAKE UP FOR CONTROVERSIAL PRISON RELEASE’
By Poly Pantelides

Published on September 13, 2012

Armenian, Azerbaijan, controversial, Cyprus, Gagik Ghalatchian,
Gurgen Margaryan, Hungary, prison sentence, Ramil Safarov

HUNGARY has a lot to do to make up for the release of convicted
murderer Ramil Safarov, the Armenian Ambassador to Greece and Cyprus,
Gagik Ghalatchian, has said.

World-wide, the Armenian community has been protesting the release
of Safarov, an Azeri officer who hacked to death Armenian officer
Gurgen Margaryan in Hungary back in 2004. The two men were attending
a NATO-run English language course.

Safarov was sentenced to life imprisonment in Hungary but was sent
back to Azerbaijan where he was recently pardoned.

On return to Azerbaijan Safarov was welcomed as a hero, pardoned,
promoted to the rank of major, and paid wages for the eight years he
was in jail.

Although Hungarian authorities have said they were assured Safarov’s
sentence would be enforced in Azerbaijan, Armenians all over the world
have demanded the pardon’s annulment and Safarov’s return to prison.

“Hungary should apologise to the international community and Armenia
and should undertake such measures that are equivalent to the slap
received from Azerbaijan,” Ghalatchian said.

“Otherwise, we will continue considering this unfriendly gesture
towards Armenia was a deliberate and motivated action,” he said.

Reuters has recently reported that there have been discussions of a
loan from oil-rich Azerbaijan to Hungary worth at least [email protected] billion.

During his trial, Safarov said the reasons behind his actions were
the Azeri-Armenian war in the 1990s, BBC reported.

A war between the Azeris and Armenians broke out in the early 1990s
over the mostly Armenian enclave of Nagorno-Karabakh. A ceasefire was
signed in 1994 but the ambassador told the Cyprus Mail that Azerbaijan
“obviously provokes Armenia” in peace negotiations and by “justifying
and glorifying the murderer [Safarov]”.

International mediators – including representatives from Russia,
the US and France – have expressed concern over prospects for peace
following the pardon.

“We believe that with this act Azerbaijan once again, and this time
ultimately, lost any prospect of its being a reliable partner in
the eyes of the international community. We hope, and we are working
[towards] that direction, that the international community finally
stops the policy of false parity,” Ghalatchian said. He said that
the international community, “the United Nations, OSCE, EU, Council
of Europe, CSTO, NATO, the US., Russia, France and dozens of other
countries and organisations responded to this incident and expressed
their support to the Republic of Armenia.”

But this is just the beginning of a process, he said. Armenia is
also going to raise the issue legally in the “competent institutions”
in relation to Azerbaijan and Hungary’s actions, Chalatchian said.

From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress