Taking advantage of the tragedy for own purposes

18/04/2006 Rafael TEYMURAZYAN

The court of Hungary made a decision yesterday to sentence murderer Ramil Safarov to life imprisonment case (with a right of amnesty minimum to thirty years) to murderer Ramil Safarov, who had murdered Armenian army officer Gurgen Margaryan. Yesterday, head of the Armenian Progressive Party (APP), Tigran Urikhanyan, hosted a press-conference in regard to this court decision. Several months ago he announced that if the court didn’t sentence him into life imprisonment he would give $120,000 to anyone who killed murderer Ramil Safarov. After this announcement politicians said that this was a foolish act to win political dividends by using the tragedy for their own purposes. But yesterday during the press-conference he criticized those people who said such things and added that this case was through their efforts, thus continuing to take avantage of the tragedy for their own purposes. He also mentioned the announcement of an Azerbaijani politician saying that they shouldn’t expect any fair decisions from the court of Hungary because it is under the pressure of Armenian lobbying and added that the only Armenian power to lobby was their party. As for the critics for these announcements, Urikhanyan said, “We didn’t speak about that clearly because in that case we would not be able to reach our goal. We didn’t reply to all those announcements because we were waiting for the results we were fighting for”, said Urikhanyan and added that they did this with the purpose of making everyone in Budapest sure that there are powers in Armenia which are not indifferent to such things and are acting. However, after this press conference yesterday we understood that this judgment was not only because of their efforts. According to him “this decision was made due to the recent geopolitical developments and was also a political decision, which increased the reputation of Hungary’s courts in the world”. However, this tragedy is still being taken advantage of for some political purposes.