European Court Says Azerbaijan Wrong To Release Lieutenant Ramil Safarov
The European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) says Azerbaijan
was wrong to release a man convicted of killing an Armenian national while the
two were on a NATO training course in Hungary.
The Strasbourg-based court said on May 26 in a 6-1 vote that
there had been no justification for the Azerbaijani authorities' failure to
enforce the punishment of Ramil Safarov "and to in effect grant him
impunity for a serious hate crime" following his conviction in Hungary for
the 2004 murder of Gurgen Margarian.
Safarov was sentenced to life in prison in a 2006 trial for
hacking the sleeping Armenian military officer to death with an ax during a
NATO Partnership for Peace training mission.
Safarov admitted to the murder, saying Margarian had
urinated on an Azerbaijani flag and otherwise "insulted" his country.
However, in 2012 Hungary extradited Safarov back to
Azerbaijan to complete his sentence. Upon his arrival, he was promptly pardoned
by President Ilham Aliyev, freed from his sentence, and given a hero's welcome.
His back salary was paid and he was given an apartment.
Relatives of the murdered Armenian officer said they took
the case to the ECHR for justice, not compensation. There were hoping the court
would rule against Hungary for the extradition of Safarov and Azerbaijan for
its release of the convicted murderer.
In its ruling, the ECHR said it "found that there had
been no justification for the Azerbaijani authorities' failure to enforce the
punishment of R.S. [Ramil Safarov] and to in effect grant him impunity for a
serious hate crime."
"Moreover, the applicants had provided sufficient
evidence to show that R.S.'s pardon and other measures in his favor had been
ethnically motivated, namely statements by high-ranking officials expressing
their support for his conduct, and in particular the fact that it had been
directed against Armenian soldiers, and a specially dedicated page to R.S. on
the president of Azerbaijan's website," it added.
The court said that while Azerbaijan had "clearly
endorsed" Safarov's actions, the ECHR stopped short of holding the country
responsible for what it called "a private decision" that was "so
flagrantly abusive and far removed from the official status of a military
officer" that the country could not be responsible just because he was a
state agent.
Azerbaijan and Armenia fought a bloody war in the 1990s over
the ethnic Armenian territory of Nagorno-Karabakh, with a shaky Russia-brokered
cease-fire the only guarantee of peace since 1994.
Russia, the United States, and France are the co-chairs of
the Minsk Group of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe
(OSCE), which acts as a mediator in resolving the crisis. The group has been
struggling for years to mediate a solution to the situation.
The court exonerated Hungary in its ruling, saying courts
there had handed down "well-reasoned" decisions, while the
extradition "followed to the letter the procedure set out in the Council
of Europe Convention on the Transfer of Sentenced Persons."
The court held, unanimously, that Azerbaijan was to pay the
applicants, jointly, 15,143.33 British pounds in respect of costs and expenses
for the case.
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