The speech of the parliamentarian from Shamakhi Elkhan Suleymanov on the amnesty of Ramil Safarov at the meeting of Legal Affairs Committee of PACE held in Paris- 06.09.2012
Dear colleagues,
Putting aside the emotional aspects around the case of Lieutenant Ramil Safarov, I will only focus on facts.
Firstly, Ramil Safarov was transferred from Hungary to Azerbaijan in full conformity with the Convention on the Transfer of Sentenced Persons.
Secondly, he was pardoned in full accordance with Article 12 of the above-mentioned Convention which allows explicitly any member country to grant pardon of sentence in such a case.
Thirdly, it is obvious that the debate on the Ramil Safarov case currently launched by Armenia in the international area has the only goal to consolidate the illegal Armenian presence in the occupied territories and to reject the demand of all international organizations (UN, PACE, EP, OSCE, etc) to withdraw their armed forces unconditionally from these territories.
Dear colleagues,
Putting aside the emotional aspects around the case of Lieutenant Ramil Safarov, I will only focus on facts.
Firstly, Ramil Safarov was transferred from Hungary to Azerbaijan in full conformity with the Convention on the Transfer of Sentenced Persons.
Secondly, he was pardoned in full accordance with Article 12 of the above-mentioned Convention which allows explicitly any member country to grant pardon of sentence in such a case.
Thirdly, it is obvious that the debate on the Ramil Safarov case currently launched by Armenia in the international area has the only goal to consolidate the illegal Armenian presence in the occupied territories and to reject the demand of all international organizations (UN, PACE, EP, OSCE, etc) to withdraw their armed forces unconditionally from these territories.
Whereas the Azerbaijani lieutenant Ramil Safarov spent eight years in prison, not one single Armenian was ever prosecuted for killing thousands of Azerbaijani civilians since twenty years.
1065 Azerbaijani civilians have been killed by Armenians for recent years. When we addressed the Council of Europe regarding these crimes, all of you kept silent as this is the case now. The international community never condemned this Armenian violence and even remained totally indifferent to any Azerbaijani complaint in this regard.
Fourthly, no one doubts about the fact that a substantial part of Azerbaijan is under illegal Armenian occupation. It was even confirmed by my Armenian colleague Davit HARUTYUNYAN in the Monitoring Committee two days ago.
There was a dispute on the fact that Armenians are illegally occupying 20% of the Azerbaijani territory and he strongly insisted on correcting the report by claiming that Armenia is only occupying 15% of Azerbaijan. He also admitted that 700 thousand but not 1 million Azerbaijanis were forced to leave their home and to be refugees in their own country.
I wish to thank him for this honest confession but at the same time I want to stress my disappointment as all my colleagues kept silent confronted to this sad reality.
The Azerbaijan community cannot understand how the Council of Europe considers it normal that one member state is illegally occupying another member State and no one raises a voice.
Lastly, I’d like to note with regret that the incident of Ramil Safarov and continuous killing of Azerbaijani civilians by Armenians are the results of the non- implementation by Armenia of the resolutions of the above mentioned international organizations.
We belong to different religions, but all of us have one God. I urge you to vote for justice and fairness and to stop discrimination.
