Murder of Gurgen Margaryan
On 19 February 2004, Gurgen Margaryan, a lieutenant in the Armenian army, was murdered in Budapest, Hungary, by Ramil Safarov, a lieutenant in the Azerbaijani army.
In September 2013, a monument dedicated to Margaryan was unveiled in Yerevan.
Education
Margaryan was born in Yerevan, the capital of Armenia. He received his secondary education at School No. 122 in Yerevan and subsequently graduated from the State Engineering University of Armenia with a bachelor's degree in engineering. After completing his mandatory military service term from 1999 to 2001, he became an officer in the Ministry of Defense of Armenia with the rank of lieutenant.Murder
On 11 January 2004, he left for Budapest, Hungary, to participate in a three-month English language course which was part of NATO's Partnership for Peace program. On 19 February he was murdered with an axe, while asleep, by his fellow participant, Azerbaijani Lieutenant Ramil Safarov. The murder took place at 5 am, while the victim was asleep. Margaryan's Hungarian roommate, Balázs Kuti, remembers that on the evening of February 18 he had tea and went to bed, as he had a fever, while Margaryan busied himself with his studies. Around 9:30 pm, Margaryan went to visit another program participant from Armenia, Hayk Makuchyan, who was staying in another room.Kuti does not remember when Margaryan returned, but early in the morning he felt that someone had turned on the light. He thought it was Gurgen returning to the room, but after hearing some muffled sounds, he turned his head away from the wall and saw Safarov standing by Margaryan's bed with a long axe in his hands:
A postmortem concluded that Safarov had delivered sixteen blows to Margaryan's face, nearly severing his head from his body. Earlier, a briefing given by the Hungarian police added that Margaryan had also been stabbed several times in the chest. After he killed Margaryan, Safarov went forward with his plan to murder Makuchyan, but discovered his door was locked. In the meantime, Kuti had run out of his room and summoned the police, who promptly arrived at the scene and arrested Safarov. During interrogation he confessed to killing Margaryan. A Budapest policeman commented that the murder had been conducted "with unusual cruelty," adding "beside a number of knife wounds on his chest, the victim's head was practically severed from his body."
Trial and verdict
During the trial, Safarov's lawyers attempted to convince the judge that he had an unstable mind, and claimed that he suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder. They argued that he had gone through psychological trauma during the First Nagorno-Karabakh War. However, this contradicted a statement Safarov had made when he said he had been studying in Azerbaijan's capital of Baku and in Turkey from 1992 to 1996. A mental health examination conducted by an Azerbaijani doctor concluded that he was not "entirely sane." Another examination found that Safarov was of stable mind at the time of the murder, and the judge chose to believe this assessment. An Azerbaijani physician alleged, based on his supposed personal conversations with Safarov, that his motives stemmed from his belief that Margaryan had insulted the Azerbaijani flag in front of other participants in the NATO seminar. However, in both his interrogation and his court trial Safarov said he murdered Margaryan just because he was an Armenian. No witnesses were ever called by the defense during the trial to corroborate these allegations in court and prosecution lawyers strongly disputed that they had taken place.On 16 April 2006, the court sentenced Safarov to life imprisonment without possibility of appeal until 2036. The judge, Andras Vaskuti, cited the premeditated nature and brutality of the crime and the fact that Safarov showed no remorse for his deeds as the reasons for the sentence. On 22 February 2007, a Hungarian court upheld the ruling following an appeal filed by Safarov's lawyer.
In late August 2012, however, Hungarian authorities agreed to release and extradite Safarov to Azerbaijan to serve the remainder of his sentence there. Though the Hungarian government stated that it had received assurances from the Azerbaijan government that the sentence would be enforced, President Ilham Aliyev issued a pardon immediately upon Safarov's arrival to Baku and ordered that he be "freed from the term of his punishment." Safarov has since been promoted to the rank of major and provided with accommodations by the Azerbaijan government. The Government of Azerbaijan reportedly offered to buy 2-4 billion dollars of Hungarian sovereign bonds in order to secure the release of the convicted murderer.