Hayk Kotanjian, President of Political Science Association of Armenia, Doctor of Political Science comments on the statement by the President of Azerbaijan “Ilham Aliyev: SAFAROV Pardon – THE PROBLEM OF ARMENIAN PRESIDENT, NOT THE REGION” published in REGNUM Information Agency on September 12, 2012.
President Aliyev, to find an excuse for his order to pardon and justify – without a judicial act – the citizen ofAzerbaijansentenced to life imprisonment by the Hungarian court, the murderer of a sleeping fellow student within the framework of NATO Partnership for Peace Program, has falsified the juridical fact of pardoning Varuzhan Karapetyan in 2001. Varuzhan Karapetyan, a citizen of another state, after 17 years of imprisonment was released from further serving a sentence in France (not in Armenia, as stated by Aliyev) based on the law-governed legal act of the French court (not by the decision of the President of Armenia, as stated by Aliyev). Thus, Karapetyan was not extradited, but being released he left forArmenia.
But the heart of the problem is that Aliyev and his entire family by their dictatorial behavior manipulate the Constitution and the laws ofAzerbaijan. Illicit pardon and justification of the murderer are symptoms of anti-democratic disdain of Aliyev’s regime for individual and collective human rights, democratic principles and norms of leading and governing state. Keeping the society under the family’s total control and suppressing any manifestations of civil and political freedoms, by his sultanate-style verdicts Aliyev manipulates not only the law, but also the justice. The anti-democtratism of the family’s authoritarian is aggravated by the absolute absence of opposition in the Parliament.
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Trustworthy communications with my Azerbaijani colleagues again and again convince me of the fact that there are many educated, notable and democtratically oriented sons and daughters among the Azerbaijani people, who cast doubt not only over the legality of the genocidal axe murderer Safarov’s pardon, but also the Aliyev family’s anti-democratic and corrupted policy in general. This disgraceful fact regarding the heroization of a murder of a sleeping man – an action which is despised both in the East and the West – is a symptomatic evidence of the political corruption inherent in the Aliyevs’ hereditary total power, as well as their cult, driven to the absurdity in its manifestations. Taking into account the condemn of Aliyev’s anti-democratism both by Azerbaijani democratic circles and the international community – which was actualized in terms of the justification of the butcher at a dictator’s whim, we have every reason to believe that President Aliyev is becoming a problem both for democracy and security of Azerbaijan, as well as the entire region.