The demonstrators called on the Yemeni authorities to release the two journalists, and to prosecute those implicated in their disappearance, arrest and detention. Protestors rights under Yemeni law and international agreements.

As a part of the protest, which was organised by the Houd Organisation and the Sajeen Committee for the Freedoms of Opinion and Expression, participants held a dinner in solidarity of the members of the journalists' families and other detainees who have been forcibly disappeared in Yemeni prisons.

On the evening of Monday 16 August 2010, the National Security forces, accompanied by a large "anti-terrorist" security force, raided the houses of Abd al-Ilah Haidar Shafie and Kamal Yahya Sharaf, in the heart of the capital Sana'a. They carried out illegal house searches and then took them at gunpoint to an unknown location. They later turned out to be in the custody of the National Security forces, according to the account of the Anti-Terrorism and State Security Prosecution Service, which admitted, under pressure from the victims' families and human rights agencies, that it had issued an arrest warrant, and requested that their files be transferred to them.