Agence France Presse — English
April 14, 2006 Friday 3:44 PM GMT

Nationalists protest sentencing of Azeri who axed Armenian

Students from a nationalist organisation demonstrated Friday in Baku
against the sentencing by a Hungarian court of an Azerbaijani officer
found guilty of axing to death an Armenian lieutenant.

About 40 youths from the Karabakh Liberation Organisation met in a
Baku park to call for Ramil Safarov, the Azeri officer, to be freed.
“Freedom for Ramil!” they chanted before police quickly dispersed
their rally.

Safarov was convicted and sentenced to life imprisonment Thursday in
a Budapest court for his murder of Armenian Lieutenant Gurgen
Markarian in 2004 while the two were attending a NATO-sponsored
training course in the city.

Azerbaijan’s defence ministry said it would pay the costs of an
appeal. “We want to express our disagreement with this verdict,”
ministry spokesman Ilgar Verdiyev told AFP.

The shocking murder in a Budapest hotel highlighted the tense
standoff between Azerbaijan and Armenia since a 1994 ceasefire in the
disputed territory of Nagorno-Karabakh, where ethnic-Armenian forces
drove out the Azeris during the early 1990s.

Ever since the conflict, the two neighbours have had no direct road
or commercial links, while internationally backed peace talks have
dragged on for years without result.