Update: Poet Dareen Tatour Released, Will Continue House Arrest at Home

UPDATE: According to Dareen’s family, she has been released from prison and will continue her house arrest at home.

They write:

We, the family of the poet Dareen Tawfeq Tatour are overjoyed with her release; and we wish to offer our heart-felt thanks to all her supporters –here and all over the world. Dareen is now able to live with her family in Reineh while continuing to endure house arrest

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As Israeli politicians continue to spin over a poem Mahmoud Darwish wrote in 1964, Dareen Tatour — who was set to return to her own village outside Nazareth yesterday, to continue her house arrest in a family home — was remanded instead to prison:

According to the principal chronicler of Dareen’s case, the blogger “Yoav Haifawi”:

We invited everybody to celebrate the return of poet Dareen Tatour to Reineh today, after more than three months in prison and more than six months in house arrest in exile in Kiryat Ono near Tel Aviv (more than 100 km from her home). …

But after a prolonged drama in the Nazareth court the result was that Dareen was arrested and returned to prison. She will probably spend the night in the filthy cells of the Jelemeh detention center, where she spent the first month of her detention. Tomorrow we will have another hearing in court, but as things go we can’t be optimistic until we will see Dareen fully free.

How did this come aboute? Approval from the private company that operates of the electronic surveillance device Dareen wears was missing. They examined Dareen’s family home, but have not yet issued their report.

While Dareen could have returned to the place where she’s been under house arrest, outside of Tel Aviv, she decided she could not. Yoav Haifawi:

After some time she went back to the judge with her family and lawyer and repeated her position that she simply can’t go back to Kiryat Ono. The judge ordered the court guards to arrest her and give her to the police.

The full report on Free Haifa. You can also follow news of Dareen’s case in English, Arabic, and Hebrew on Facebook.