By Ellen Barry
Ramil Safarov
stepped uncertainly off the plane in his native Azerbaijan last Friday,
returning home after spending eight years in a Hungarian prison for a gruesome
murder. But it took only a few minutes for the celebrations to begin. There was
a pardon, a new apartment, eight years of back pay, a promotion to the rank of
major and the status of a national hero.
Mr. Safarov, 35, was already famous because of his crime.
Eight years ago, carrying an ax, he crept into a dormitory room in Hungary where
an Armenian serviceman, a fellow student in a NATO-sponsored English class,
slept, and nearly decapitated him.
But now Mr. Safarov will almost certainly go down in
history for the way he was freed, an episode people have started to call “The
Safarov Affair.”
The backlash has embarrassed Hungary, which agreed to
extradite Mr. Safarov on the assumption that he would serve at least 25 years
of a life sentence. It has set off protests in Budapest and enraged Armenia,
where activists pelted the Hungarian Embassy with eggs and burned Hungarian
flags.
And it threatens to end the lengthy peace process that
has kept Azerbaijan and Armenia from sliding back into bloody conflict over the
disputed territory of Nagorno-Karabakh. Mr. Safarov, who was a boy during the
war with Armenia, embodies the hatred that has pooled deeply in the public as
leaders have sat through rounds of faltering negotiations.
“If we have no process, what’s left is a vacuum, which
gets filled with an escalation toward war; we’ll see how the Armenian side
reacts, but that’s my fear,” said Thomas de Waal, a Caucasus specialist at the
Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington. “It’s suddenly more
dangerous.”
Mr. Safarov, then a lieutenant, and his victim, Lt.
Gurgen Markarian, got to know each other in Budapest as members of an
English-language course organized by NATO’s Partnership for Peace, which was
developed to build ties with former Soviet allies in Eastern Europe.
Mr. Safarov told the police that his Armenian classmates
had insulted him and that he had grown increasingly angry, finally buying an ax
and waiting until before dawn one day to carry out his plan. He passed those
hours by finishing his English homework and taking a bath, according to a
transcript of the interview published by Armenian activists.
After Mr. Safarov was arrested, Azerbaijan’s Foreign
Ministry released a statement describing his family’s losses during the war
with Armenia, and suggesting that Lieutenant Markarian had goaded him.
“There are indications that the Armenian servicemen
repeatedly insulted the honor and dignity of the Azerbaijani officer and
citizen,” the statement said. “All this would have inevitably influenced the
suspect’s emotional state.”
Oil-rich Azerbaijan carried out a sustained lobbying
effort to extradite Mr. Safarov from Hungary, over the protests of Armenian
officials. The Hungarian government, under pressure to explain its decision to
turn over Mr. Safarov, has said it received written assurance from Azerbaijan
that he would not be paroled until he had served 25 years in Lieutenant
Markarian’s murder.
On Friday, though, he was pardoned by Azerbaijan’s
president, Illham H. Aliyev. Mr. Safarov’s presence so electrified citizens
that all day strangers congratulated one another on the streets of Baku.
It is not clear how the Armenian government will respond
to Mr. Safarov’s release. “The Armenians must not be underestimated,” President
Serzh Sargsyan warned on Sunday. “We don’t want a war, but if we have to, we
will fight and win,” he said. “We are not afraid of murderers, even those who
enjoy the highest patronage.”
Richard Giragosian, an analyst based in Yerevan, Armenia,
said that he doubted that either side was seeking a war, but that unfolding
events risked “a war by accident.”
An Armenian opposition party on Tuesday proposed formally
recognizing Nagorno-Karabakh as independent — a step that would signal the
final collapse of peace talks that have long been encouraged by Russia and the
West. Armenia could ratchet up the confrontation by opening an airport in
Stepanakert, the capital of the disputed territory, or by responding
overwhelmingly to cease-fire violations.
“Each side is escalating,” Mr. Giragosian said. “It’s
almost like a matter of physics. For every action there is a reaction.”
Mr. Aliyev, Azerbaijan’s president, has invested vast
sums in his country’s international standing, most recently serving as host of
the Eurovision Song Contest, but waves of condemnation have emerged since
Friday — most swiftly from the United States, which issued statements saying
officials in Washington were “extremely troubled” and “deeply concerned.” On
Monday, Russia’s Foreign Ministry expressed “deep concern, noting the case’s
“extreme atrocity.”
Zerdusht Alizadeh, an opposition politician and analyst
at the Helsinki Citizens’ Assembly, said Mr. Aliyev was looking ahead to
elections next year, and had little to show for the drawn-out efforts to
mediate the conflict in Nagorno-Karabakh. Mr. Safarov’s homecoming, he said,
was a far simpler way to declare victory.
“Giving so much support to a hero — a person who killed
an Armenian — makes the president a hero, too,” he said.
By Tuesday, though, the backlash was dominating the day’s
news coverage, and Mr. Safarov had made no further public appearances.
The episode, Mr. Giragosian said, was a reminder of the
depth and force of the ethnic grievances left behind as the Soviet empire
receded across Europe.
“It’s almost like the Balkans was — we had no idea of the
barbarity of these people,” he said. “Holding a grudge for 100 years is
nothing. It’s like a blood vendetta. At the same time, there are wider
implications; it increases an already worrisome trend toward possible renewed
conflict here.”
Shahla Sultanova contributed reporting from Baku,
Azerbaijan.
This article has been revised to reflect the following
correction:
Correction: September 5, 2012
An earlier version of this article referred incorrectly
to Zerdusht Alizadeh. He is male.
This article has been revised to reflect the following
correction:
Correction: September 5, 2012
Because of an editing error, an earlier version of this
article mistakenly said Azerbaijan’s president, Illham H. Aliyev, greeted Ramil
Safarov at the airport.
http://nyti.ms/Ol2aTK
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