TMCnet
April 15 2006
Azerbaijan to ask for extradition of murderer sentenced to life
(Hungarian News Agency Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge)Budapest, April 15
(MTI) – Azerbaijan authorities will ask Hungary to extradite the
Azerbaijani army officer who was sentenced to life imprisonment by a
Budapest Court last Thursday for the murder of an Armenian.
Ramil Safarov, when he was 27, killed an Armenian classmate during a
NATO Partnership for Peace course in Budapest two years ago. He used
an ax to hack to death his sleeping colleague Gurgen Markarian, 26,
of Armenia, in the dormitory of Miklos Zrinyi National Defence
University, where both of them were attending a three-month
English-language course.
“No matter the seriousness of the Hungarian court verdict, Hungary,
as a signatory to the Council of Europe’s 1983 convention, should
extradite Safarov to the Azeri authorities,” the BakuTODAY.net portal
quoted a senior Justice Ministry official as saying.
Safarov, who showed no repentance in court, said the murder had been
a revenge for a 1992 Armenian assault of Azerbaijanis in the
Nagorno-Karabakh region, which he witnessed as a child. The
Azerbaijani officer said that the Armenians he had met in the
dormitory “were smiling mockingly and were behaving the way members
of a victorious army usually behave towards the defeated”.
Safarov was charged with premeditated murder carried out with unusual
cruelty and vicious motives and sentenced to life in prison without
any chance of parole.