Djokovic spent Saturday night detained back in an immigration hotel after Immigration Minister Alex Hawke on Friday blocked his visa, which was originally revoked when Djokovic landed at a Melbourne airport on Jan. 5.
He is permitted to leave hotel detention to spend Sunday in his lawyers’ offices, under the guard of two immigration officials, while the challenge is heard via a video hearing.
Djokovic has acknowledged his travel declaration was incorrect because it failed to indicate that he’d been in multiple countries in the two-week period before his arrival in Australia.Lawyers for Djokovic filed documents in court that revealed Hawke had stated that the tennis star “is perceived by some as a talisman of a community of anti-vaccination sentiment.
Hundreds of activists held a peaceful rally outside the Melbourne Park complex that hosts the Australian Open, and planned another for Monday. Sydney-based immigration lawyer Simon Jeans said he was surprised that Djokovic was no longer being deported because his COVID-19 infection last month did not exempt him from Australia’s strict rules that foreign visitors are vaccinated unless there are sound medical reasons that they can’t be.
In that same post, Djokovic said he went ahead with an interview and a photo shoot with a French newspaper in Serbia despite knowing he’d tested positive for COVID-19. Djokovic has been attempting to use what he says was a positive test taken on Dec. 16 to justify a medical exemption that would allow him to avoid the vaccine requirement on the grounds that he already had COVID-19.
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