Brussels, Feb 5 (DPA) Iran should immediately halt all judicial executions, especially those which are being used to “intimidate” anti-government protestors, the European Union’s (EU) foreign-policy director said Friday.
Iran has carried out a series of executions of dissidents following sporadic anti-government protests in the second half of 2009. Nine more demonstrators were sentenced to death Tuesday.

The latest announcement “is part of a disturbing trend to intimidate opposition protestors”, the EU’s new foreign policy director Catherine Ashton said in a statement.

The EU “is opposed to capital punishment under all circumstances and calls on Iran to institute an immediate moratorium on executions. The European Union is deeply concerned by this announcement,” the statement said.

Ashton’s comment was published on the same day that she was scheduled to fly to Munich to attend the city’s annual security conference.

Earlier Friday, Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki unexpectedly announced that he was also to attend the conference.

EU leaders named Ashton the bloc’s High Representative in November. The newly-created post makes her both representative of the EU’s member states and vice-president of the bloc’s powerful executive, the European Commission.