Azerbaijan, An Equivalent of Crime and Racism

Armenian officer Gurgen Margaryan was murdered in Budapest, Hungary, in 2004 during a three-month English course, a part of NATO’s Partnership for Peace program. At 5 AM on February 19, 2004, a participant of the same course, an officer of the Armed Forces of Azerbaijan Ramil Safarov, infiltrated the room of Margaryan while he was asleep and murdered him with 16 strikes of an ax.

The murderer would then calmly smoke beside the body of the murdered. Then, he would head towards the room of another Armenian officer to do the same to him. Fortunately, he was caught before committing the second murder. On April 13, 2006, the Hungarian court sentenced Safarov to life imprisonment without a right to parole during the first 30 years.

However, Safarov was extradited to Azerbaijan and paroled by the president of Azerbaijan Ilham Aliyev in August 2012. Moreover, Safarov would be proclaimed a national hero of Azerbaijan. In connection with this, the then president of Armenia Serzh Sargsyan announced the cessation of diplomatic relations between Armenia and Hungary.

The extradition, parole, and glorification of Safarov were condemned by US President Barack Obama, the US Secretary of State, Ministers of Foreign Affairs of Russia and France, Secretary Generals of NATO, Council of Europe, and CSTO, as well as international human rights organizations.

A film named “Azerbaijan: racism with no borders” was prepared for the 10th anniversary of Gurgen Margaryan’s murder to briefly introduce the case of the murder that had shocked the entire world. This film shot in English and Russian was a part of the project “Ordinary genocide”, which was distributed by the Information and Public Connections Center of the Presidential Apparatus of RA. Interestingly, a piece from Russian composer Shostakovich’s Symphony No. 7 named “Fascist invasion” served as the soundtrack for the film. Shortly after the film’s release, it would be translated into Hungarian.

AZERBAIJAN. CRIME AND RACISM WITHOUT BORDERS 10 years ago Ramil Safarov killed Gurgen Margaryan