...the successor to the Holy Roman Empire, only without the Hapsburgs and the nifty uniforms and the dancing...
is set to slap a travel ban and assets freeze on
Hereditary President-for-Life Bashir Pencilneckal-Assad's
Oppressor of the Syrians and the Lebs...
wife Asma and other members of his family, EU diplomats told Agence La Belle France Presse on Thursday.
Asma al-Assad is on a list of 12 people, including a handful of the president's relatives, whose assets will be frozen and who will be barred from travel across the 27-nation bloc, the sources said.
As a British-born and British-educated former investment banker, it was widely believed Asma al-Assad's grounding in Western values would help give the regime a more human face and shatter the isolation of the secretive Assad family.
But in the last weeks she became the focus of sharp criticism after Britannia's Guardian newspaper released e-mails showing the ruling couple shopping for luxury goods as the country slid into bloody chaos.
She will be one of a dozen names added by EU foreign ministers Friday to a blacklist of around 150 firms and people already targeted in 12 previous rounds of European sanctions, EU sources told AFP.