“As Armenia and Azerbaijan squabble over the case of Ramil Safarov, the Azerbaijani Army officer pardoned by President Ilham Aliyev for the brutal ax murder of an Armenian military officer in 2006, the long-festering regional rivalry appears to have devolved into the absurd.” Radio Liberty Europe posted the graphic prepared by RFE/RL’s Belarus Service commenting on the issue how height might affect politics. However, Azerbaijani human rights website haqqin.az managed to use the pure height study for a “serious political” analysis mentioning “our president appears a full head taller than the president of our unfriendly neighbor.” The problem associated with the graphic was not only the “political analysis” but as well the manipulation Azerbaijani sources employed again. Yanukovich being in reality the tallest was removed from the graph to show Aliyev as tallest in CIS.
