Cairo - Egyptian security forces on Wednesday morning released a German-Egyptian graduate student and blogger held incommunicado since Friday night, his friends and family reported.

Late on Friday night, officers from Egypt's domestic intelligence agency, State Security Investigations, detained Philip Rizk, a German-Egyptian graduate student, blogger, and film-maker, after he completed a symbolic march in Egypt's Qalubiya province north of Cairo to protest the blockade of Gaza.

"It's true. Philip is at home. We are very happy," Rizk's sister, Jeannette, told Deutsche Presse-Agentur dpa on Wednesday.

She said the family was not saying anything else for the moment.

In the days since Rizk's arrest, his lawyers, family and friends said they had received no reliable word as to his whereabouts or any charges against him.

Approximately 200 protesters gathered on the steps of Cairo's Press Syndicate on Tuesday evening to call for the release of Rizk and others detained in Egypt for protesting the blockade of the Gaza Strip.

Also on Friday, police took Dia al-Din Gad from his home in Egypt's Gharbiya province, north-west of Cairo.

On his blog, An Angry Voice, Gad was often sharply critical of the Egyptian government's policy toward the Gaza Strip. He became especially outspoken during Israel's
22-day offensive in the Gaza Strip.

On February 3, a Cairo administrative court postponed hearing a complaint against the Interior Ministry alleging that a third blogger, Mohammed Adil, had been detained illegally in November for traveling to the Gaza Strip in January 2008.

Prosecutors issued a formal arrest warrant for Adil on November 24, four days after his arrest.

Adil is charged with belonging to a banned group, a probable reference to the Muslim Brotherhood, and crossing into Gaza illegally.

And on February 5, a military court in the Suez Canal town of Ismailiya began its trial of Magdi Hussein, a fiery orator from Egypt's suspended Labour Party, who faces charges of crossing into the Gaza Strip illegally in January.

Hussein chronicled his trip in daily entries posted to the Labour Party's website after he crossed into the Gaza Strip through a hole in the border fence Jan 23.

In articles posted on the Labour Party's website, Hussein said he had met with politicians and militants from Hamas and Islamic Jihad in Gaza, and that he had preached the virtues of armed struggle in Gazan mosques. (dpa)