Echo of Moscow on Safarov case: Criminal’s wretched justifications turn into ideology in country immerged into paranoia
“I want to draw your attention to how strikingly a criminal’s wretched justifications suddenly turn into state ideology in a country immerged into paranoia,” said the presenter of the radio Echo of Moscow Yulia Latynina in her show “Access Code” referring to Azerbaijani officer Ramil Safarov, who murdered the sleeping Armenian officer Gurgen Margaryan with 16 axe-stabs in 2004 and was transferred to his country in 2012 to be pardoned on the Azerbaijani president Ilham Aliyev’s decree.
“There is such a hero in Azerbaijan. His name is Ramil Safarov. He attended NATO states qualification courses ‘Partnership for Peace’, and there he found an Armenian officer by his side. It stuck in his craw. He went to the shop to buy an axe and stabbed the Armenian officer while he was asleep. When arrested, he frankly declared that, look, hatred against the Armenians rose in me. They still greeted us at the beginning, he says about the Armenian. That is, they were saying ‘Hi’, but I did not greet them back. And it was curious when they passed by and murmured something in Armenian and smiled in my face. At that moment I decided to kill them,” Latynina says.
That is, people said hi and smiled in his face, and at that moment he decided to kill them, as Latynina has it. These were Mr Safarov’s initial explanations. “But later everything changed, and he started to say that the Armenian serviceman had more than once made statements insulting Azerbaijani officer and citizen’s honor and dignity. And the further the more. What happens is that first he was given a life sentence but later he was transferred to Azerbaijan. Azerbaijan pardoned him right on the jet bridge. There were certain comrades who required that Ramil Safarov be declared Man of the Year for his merits in defending the state interests and the national interests. Later different Azerbaijani state officials came up describing Safarov, I quote, ‘as victim to the Armenian terrorism and provocations’,” the anchor says.
When the state speaks up for Ramil Safarov saying that it is the sawn-off head what appears to be to blame, it is where it suddenly turns into state ideology, she adds.
In 2004, Armenian officer Gurgen Margaryan was taking part in a three-month English course of NATO “Partnership for Peace” in Budapest. Early in the morning of February 19 he was murdered. The murderer – Azerbaijani officer Ramil Safarov – delivered 16 blows of axe to the face of the sleeping Armenian officer. As a result, the Hungarian court found him sane and sentenced him to life imprisonment without a right of pardon for 30 years. The news about the extradition of Ramil Safarov to his homeland and pardon by the Azerbaijani president Ilham Aliyev broke out on August 31, 2012. Ramil Safarov, the pardoned murderer, was met like a hero in Azerbaijan. They gave him an apartment and paid an officer’s stipend for the 8 years he had spent in detention. Moreover, the Defense Minister of Azerbaijan granted Safarov with extraordinary Major rank and wished him “further success.”
Because of Safarov’s extradition to Azerbaijan, the president of Armenia Serzh Sargsyan declared about the suspension of diplomatic relations with Hungary.
Safarov’s extradition, pardon, and glorification in Azerbaijan was condemned by the US president Barack Obama, US State Department, Ministries of Foreign Affairs of Russia and France, Secretary General of Council of Europe, Secretary General of CSTO, NATO, and international human rights organizations. The European Parliament adopted a condemning resolution.
For the 10th anniversary of Gurgen Margaryan’s murder, a video "Azerbaijan: Racism has no borders" has been prepared in the framework of "Ordinary Genocide" project. The video is available in English, Russian and Hungarian. It concisely presents the history of murder which had shocked the world, as well as the subsequent transfer and glorification of Safarov in Azerbaijan. Remarkably, the authors chose Symphony number 7 ("Leningrad") by Dmitri Shostakovich known as "the invasion of the Nazis" as a soundtrack for the footage. The project "Ordinary Genocide" is being implemented by the Information and Public Relations Center of the Armenian President’s Administration.
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