With its decision to extradite Azerbaijani officer Ramil Safarov who brutally killed Armenian officer Gurgen Margaryan, Hungary threw down the gauntlet not only to Armenia and the Nagorno-Karabakh Republic, but also to the progressive world.
"Today Azerbaijan is making a hero of a murderer and international criminal who axed an Armenian serviceman thereby questioning and giving a dare to the human values of his country as well," said Eduard Sharmazanov, vice-speaker of the Armenian National Assembly.
Artsvik Minasyan, a lawmaker from the Armenian Revolutionary Federation-Dashnaktsutyun, welcomes Serzh Sargsyan's decision to suspend ties with Hungary though he finds it to be belated.
"We should have taken preventive measures to exclude the extradition. This reveals the serious drawbacks of Armenia's foreign policy," he said.
Mr. Minasyan says Safarov's extradition was not a simple ceremony of returning a criminal to his country. "This was indeed a murder committed on ethnic grounds and it should receive an adequate response.
Nikol Pashinyan, an MP of the Armenian National Congress (HAK), says Hungary's decision [to extradite Ramil Safarov] will directly affect the Karabakh peace deal, fueling tension in the talks as Azerbaijan does not consider peaceful settlement as a solution to the conflict.
By their decision to pardon Safarov and honor him as a national hero, Azerbaijani authorities sent a massage to their army and people that erasure of Armenians is a national heroism," he said.
