BRUSSELS–Berlin halted arms sales to Riyadh and agreed with France to ban several Saudi nationals following the killing of Jamal Khashoggi, raising international pressure on the kingdom to shed light on the murder even as Europe prevaricates over unilateral action in response.
German foreign minister Heiko Maas said Monday that the travel ban covered “18 Saudi nationals who are allegedly linked to this deed.”
Separately, a spokesman for the German government said it would halt all arms sales to Saudi Arabia, including deals that have already been agreed such as the expected delivery of 20 warships.
The joint ban comes as Europe struggles to coordinate its response to the killing, with a number of European governments refusing to curb arms sales to Riyadh and some reluctant to take any action until Saudi investigations into the killing are complete.
A French Foreign Ministry spokeswoman didn’t immediately comment. A French official in Brussels confirmed France was taking similar measures to Germany but said Paris was still examining who it would target.
The entry ban comes days after the U.S. barred 17 Saudis from entering the country and then imposed sanctions on them. Neither the EU nor its member states have adopted sanctions against Saudi individuals in relation to the killing of Mr. Khashoggi.
The U.S. and Franco-German lists are the same with the exception of Ahmad al Asiri, who was the deputy chief of the Saudi Secret Service at the time of Mr. Khashoggi’s disappearance and doesn’t appear on the U.S. list, a person familiar with the German roster of names said.
Mr. al Asiri was known to be close to Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, to whom he served as an adviser. A German foreign ministry spokeswoman declined to comment on why Mr. al Asiri was included only in the French and German lists.
The Franco-German ban will, when formalized, prevent those on the list from entering either country and will trigger a security alert if they show up at the border of any country that is part of the European Union’s document-free travel area known as the Schengen zone. Authorities in the relevant EU countries would then decide whether to allow them in.
The Central Intelligence Agency has concluded that Mr. Khashoggi, a Saudi dissident and columnist for the Washington Post, was murdered by Saudi operatives last month under direct orders from Prince Mohammed.
After weeks of floating contradictory theories about the disappearance of Mr. Khashoggi, Saudi Arabia charged 15 people for the journalist’s murder. All of them appear on the French, German and U.S. entry-ban lists.
On Monday, European foreign ministers also stepped up their response to alleged bombing and assassination plots in Europe by Saudi’s regional foe Iran. They agreed to a Danish request to start compiling Iranian sanctions targets for those involved in a Paris bomb plot in June and the attempted assassination of an Iranian opposition figure in Denmark this fall.
Write to Bojan Pancevski at bojan.pancevski@wsj.com and Laurence Norman at laurence.norman@wsj.com
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