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Justice Ministry of Hungary was surprised at pardon granted to Azerbaijani murderer Ramil Safarov after he was extradited from Hungary, says the statement by the Justice Ministry of Hungary.

The fact that Safarov.s crime was committed on European territory in the context of an event to which both victim and culprit were guests of NATO means this case cannot be seen in the context of Armenian-Azerbaijani relations alone.

"The Strasbourg Convention on the Transfer of Sentenced People should not be abused for political purpose," European Parliament President Martin Schulz made the following statement after Ramil Safarov was pardoned by Azerbaijan's President.

Critical stage has come in the Karabakh negotiating process because of Ramil Safarov's pardoning, political expert, Stepan Grigoryan, said at today's press-conference.

The Armenian National Assembly has launched debates on a draft statement on extradition of Ramil Safarov, who killed Armenian officer Gurgen Margaryan, by the Hungarian authorities and his pardoning by the Azerbaijani president.

Civil society activists must rise above the hysteria surrounding the case of Safarov.

A big protest action is being held in front of the Hungarian Parliament building in Budapest Tuesday evening.

This is a black week for those who are seeking a peaceful settlement of the long-running Armenian-Azerbaijani conflict, Thomas de Waal, senior associate of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington DC, says in his BBC article concerning Ramil Safarov, an Azeri officer sentenced by a Hungarian court to life in jail for brutally killing an Armenian in Budapest in 2004 but recently extradited to his home country and pardoned by the local authorities.

Ramil Safarov is part of a big game of the Azeri-Turkish authorities, a game where he is doomed to die, Arkady Ter-Tadevosyan, hero of the Nagorno-Karabakh war, said during a press- conference on Tuesday.