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Elkhan Suleymanov, Head of the Azerbaijani Delegation to the Euronest PA, recently addressed a letter to the European Parliament and members of Euronest PA, trying to mitigate the impression of the European community over Ramil Safarov’s pardon.

Vahan Hovhannesyan, member of the Bureau of the Euronest PA, Vice-President of the Euronest PA, addressed a letter to the European Parliament in response.

“Dear Colleagues,

I have to admit that I was a little perplexed when I saw the letter of Mr. Elkhan Suleymanov, Head of the Azerbaijani Delegation to the Euronest PA, addressed to the President and the members of the European Parliament, as well as the members of the Euronest PA. In that letter Mr. Suleymanov tried to convince that the transfer of the sadistic murderer Ramil Safarov by Hungarian authorities to Azerbaijan, his immediate release, and further heroization were absolutely normal and judicially explainable developments. I'm not going to dwell on the legal aspects of this sequence of shameful acts. As we can see any kind of legal disagreement with Azerbaijani position can be dismissed by Mr.Suleymanov as purely emotional. As for the members of the Azerbaijani Euronest Delegation, whose opinion has been expressed in Suleymanov’s letter, no wonder that we see their smiling, happy faces on the photos with Ramil Safarov. Obviously, they consider as normal not only the above mentioned chain of the last events, but also the deed itself that triggered all the turmoil: the cold-blooded murder, which they even do not see as a crime, because the victim was an Armenian.

I’m sure that the legal experts who had worked on the Strasbourg Convention could never imagine that their creation would be used as a mean to deliberately set a criminal free.

But I think that the problem lies not in the differences between the European and Azerbaijani perceptions of justice and law, but in the field of mentality. In his letter Mr. Suleymanov is stressing the Azerbaijani casualties of the armed conflict between Azerbaijan and Mountainous Karabagh. He only fails to mention that no Azerbaijani fighter was ever axe hacked by Armenian soldiers in the sleep.

So, what is the most surprising, not only in Mr. Suleymanov’s letter, but in the general attitude of the Azerbaijani elite is that they never distinguish between the honest soldier and the night murderer. Maybe there are exceptions in Azerbaijani society, however, unfortunately, nobody has ever heard their voice.

I think, before it will become possible to discuss with Azerbaijan the issues of the legal approximation with EU, our European colleagues should have explained to their Azerbaijani counterparts this difference.”