After serving eight years of the life sentence, Safarov was extradited under the framework guidelines of the 1983 Strasbourg Convention on the Transfer of Sentenced Persons and transferred to Azerbaijan on August 31, 2012. Although the Hungarian government stated that it had received assurances from the Azerbaijan government that the remainder of the sentence would be enforced, President Ilham Aliyev issued a pardon immediately upon Safarov's arrival in Baku and ordered that he be "freed from the term of his punishment."