President Bashar al-Assad's wife Asma, a Western-educated former banker and style icon, faces an EU travel ban and asset freeze along with other members of Assad's family, diplomats said Thursday. Asma al-Assad is on a list of 12 Syrians, including a handful of the president's relatives, to be put to European Union foreign ministers Friday for a decision to bar them from travel and freeze their accounts across the 27-nation bloc.
The ministers, who in 12 previous rounds of sanctions against the Assad regime have already blacklisted some 150 firms and people, will also decide whether to add two extra firms to the list. Assad himself was targeted by EU restrictive measures as far back as May.
The Syrian first lady is a British national, however, and in London officials said an EU travel ban could not prevent her from entering Britain. "British citizens subject to EU travel bans cannot be refused entry to the UK," said a UK Border Agency spokesperson. In the latest EU sanctions aimed at ending the regime's relentless repression of dissent, the bloc last month slapped a freeze on Syria's central bank. It also banned trade in gold and precious metals with Syria and cargo flights to the EU operated by Syrians.
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