Djokovic travelled across Europe before Australia trip, at odds with declaration

FILE PHOTO: Serbian tennis player Novak Djokovic talks to his assistant Pepe Imaz during a training session at Puente Romano Tennis Club in Marbella, Spain, January 3, 2022. Picture taken January 3, 2022. KMJ-GTRES/Handout via REUTERS

BELGRADE (Reuters) - Novak Djokovic was in Serbia in the two weeks before flying to the Australian Open from Spain, according to three Belgrade residents, whose accounts to Reuters backed social media posts that contradict information contained in his immigration declaration on arrival in Melbourne.

The accounts from two eyewitnesses and another individual, obtained by Reuters on Tuesday and previously unreported, corroborated earlier social media posts that appear to show Djokovic in Belgrade less than two weeks before he headed to Spain and then on to Australia.