EU Foreign Policy Chief Calls For Musavi, Karrubi's Release

Iranian oppositionists Mir Hossein Musavi (right) and Mehdi Karrubi

The European Union's foreign policy chief, Catherine Ashton, has called on Iranian authorities to release two prominent opposition figures, Mir Hossein Musavi and Mehdi Karrubi, from house arrest.

In a statement released on February 14, Ashton says she is "very concerned" that, two years after their detention, Karrubi and Musavi, as well as Musavi's wife, Zahra Rahnavard, continue to be under house arrest.

Ashton said she was calling "on the authorities of the Islamic Republic of Iran, as she has done on various occasions in the past, to grant them their right to freedom of movement."

Musavi and fellow reformist Karrubi were presidential candidates in the June 2009 elections, which gave President Mahmud Ahmadinejad a second term in office.

They claimed the election was rigged. They were detained in early 2011.