After his defeat in a federal court, tennis star Novak Djokovic left Australia on Sunday evening. The 34-year-old Serb took off at 10:52 p.m. (local time) on flight EK409 from Melbourne to Dubai. Shortly before 6 p.m., the three judges responsible had rejected the objection by the world number one to the repeated cancellation of his visa on Friday.
Djokovic will miss the Australian Open, which begins on Monday, where he is the record winner with nine wins. In a written statement, the defending champion had already stated that he was “extremely disappointed with the decision”. However, he had also emphasized that he would respect them and cooperate with the responsible authorities regarding his departure.
This was preceded by an ongoing dispute between Djokovic and the authorities since his arrival in Melbourne on January 5th. The 20-time Grand Slam winner was unvaccinated and entered the country with a medical exemption and wanted to crown himself as the sole major record winner with a triumph at the Australian Open from Monday.
“Treated like a mass murderer”
Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic has meanwhile sharply criticized the Australian authorities’ handling of Serbian tennis star Novak Djokovic. Since his arrival in Australia, the unvaccinated top athlete has been “harassed and tortured,” Vucic told the British BBC on Sunday. He was “treated like a mass murderer”.
The harassment of Djokovic had reached “unprecedented proportions,” Vucic said in the Serbian media on Sunday. A “witch hunt” had been sparked against him, and the media had created a “lynch mood”. “They wanted to make Novak an example of how the world order works.” But Djokovic could return to Serbia “with his head held high”.
Serbian Prime Minister Ana Brnabic made a similar statement. She was enraged that the government lawyer in the case before the federal court explained that in Serbia less than 50 percent of the population was double vaccinated.
This is an “open lie”, said Brnabic. “We currently have 58 percent fully vaccinated, and 37 percent received the booster.” The numbers that Brnabic gave probably referred to the proportion of vaccinated among the adult population. According to Our World in Data, it was 47 percent of the total population.
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