Germany has issued entry bans for 18 Saudi citizens suspected of involvement in the killing of journalist Jamal Khashoggi in Riyadh’s Istanbul consulate, effectively banning them from the European Union’s passport-free Schengen zone. Monday’s move represents a sharpening of the position of Germany, which last month imposed a ban on selling weapons to Saudi Arabia until the circumstances of Khashoggi’s killing have been fully cleared up. It suggests Berlin is prepared to use its influence as the EU’s largest country to push for a tougher European line, given the ban will effectively apply across the 26-country Schengen zone. “We have coordinated closely with our French and British friends and decided, as Germany, to put an entry ban beside their names in the Schengen system database,” Foreign Ministry spokesman Christofer Burger told a regular news conference. Published in Daily Times, November 20th 2018.