EU countries have criticised "strategic partner" Azerbaijan for making a national hero out of an axe-murderer.
On 19 February 2004 during a Nato seminar at a military school in Budapest, he walked into the bedroom of a sleeping Armenian soldier, hit him 16 times with an axe and partly decapitated his dead body.
On 31 August this year, Hungary put Azerbaijani lieutenant Ramil Safarov on a plane to Baku where President Ilham Aliyev pardoned him, promoted him to the rank of major ...
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Andrew Rettman is EUobserver's foreign editor, writing about foreign and security issues since 2005. He is Polish, but grew up in the UK, and lives in Brussels. He has also written for The Guardian, The Times of London, and Intelligence Online.