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| The Funeral of Lt. Gurgen Margaryan in Armenia. |
The NATO partnership for peace program was created to promote bi-lateral cooperation and cultural enrichment between member states of the North-Atlantic. In the beginning of 2004, representatives of signatories participated in English-Language courses, held in Budapest, Hungary.
It was only one month into the 3-month event when the peace program took a murderous turn. During the night of February 18, representative of Azerbaijan, Ramil Safarov entered the bedroom of Armenian representative, Gurgen Markarian and proceeded to decapitate the defenseless man in his sleep. Axed over sixteen times, the twenty-five year old Armenian engineer was said to have been nearly beheaded in his bed, with his attacker inflicting successive stab wounds to the body thereafter. Following the butchering of Gurgen Markarian, Ramil Safarov attempted to murder another Armenian participant, Hayk Makuchyan, who had locked the door due to screams and warnings from Markarian's roommate and fellow attendees.
Ramil Safarov and fellow students testified that there had been no conflict between the Armenian and the Azerbaijani participants prior to the attack, revealing that the slaughter was purely an ethnically motivated hate crime, with Safarov confessing,
"I regret that I hadn't killed any Armenian before this. The army sent me to this training and here I learnt that two Armenians were taking the same course with us. I must say that hatred against Armenians grew inside me. In the beginning we were greeting each other, or rather they said "hi" to me but I didn't respond. The reason why I committed the murder was that they passed by and smiled in our face. At that moment I decided to kill them, to saw their heads off.."
The premeditated nature of this vicious crime, along the perpetrators obvious lack of remorse caused Ramil Safarov to be handed a sentence of life imprisonment by Budapest courts. After eight years in a Hungarian prison, Azerbaijan brokered a deal for Safarov's extradition home. Upon his arrival Azeri President Ilham Aliyev awarded the murderer 8 years back pay, a home and promotion in military rank in honor of his cowardly crime.
Sponsored by the Azeri state as a national hero, President Illham Aliyev proved once and for all his genocidal intentions towards his neighbors. His hostile tolerance of unjust killings of sleeping victims undoubtedly foreshadows the fate of Armenians if they ever have the misfortune of living under Azerbaijani rule. Professing that "The Armenians of the world are our enemies", Illham Aliyev conditions the children of his nation to celebrate racist barbarity, fueling instability in the region. It was precisely this type of government rhetoric and policy which caused the Sumgait massacre of Armenians in 1988, sparking a war between the two countries.
As if taunting the idea of the peace, Illham Aliyev disrespected the entire international community by encouraging the use of educational peace programs as an appropriate battlefield. With such villainous and unapologetic support displayed for Ramil Safarov's savage actions by the head of state, it remains highly suspicious that Mr. Safarov was not sent intentionally by his government with the motive of ambushing Armenians under the cover of a peace program. Tearing diplomatic trust and staining NATO's well-intentioned enrichment programs as a grave risk for nation's willing to send future participants.
During the sitting, the participants discussed the ISAF mission which is coming to an end in 2014 and the new initiatives to be launched from 2015.
