On 1 April 2009, Al-Karama launched an urgent appeal to the Working Group on Arbitrary Detention and the Special Rapporteur on Torture, outlining the situation of the detainees and asking these bodies to intervene with the Yemeni authorities.

Of these, four have been positively identified:  Ludo Mouafo, Pierre Pengou, Baudelaire Mechoup and Zechariah Ouafo. They were arrested at night in March 1995 at the Plaza Suites Hotel in Sana'a by the political security services and taken to a detention centre.

On 13 August 2004, more than 9 years after their arrest, these four people managed to get a message out through a prisoner who was released. This document was sent to the Organization for the Defence of Human Rights (HOUD).

This document is truly a call for help, in which the secretly held detainees describe their inhuman conditions and the daily humiliation they face in a narrow cell underneath the Sana'a Political Security centre.

On 1 September 2004, HOUD officially informed the President of the Parliament of their situation and asked him to request an investigation by the Parliamentary Committee on Civil Liberties.

On 17 September 2005, the MP Sakhr Al-Wajih Ahmed raised the issue at a parliamentary session and asked the Interior Minister, Rachad Al-Alimi about the detention of Cameroonian nationals. At this time the minister officially and publicly recognized the situation.

The Interior Minister said that these five people were being detained in the Political Security Centre and "they belonged to an international network involved in sabotage activities related with drug trafficking, money laundering and counterfeit currency ".

In an interview with the daily ‘Al Ghad', MP Sakhr Al Wajih later said that he did not know the of the charges but that he had "asked the interior minister why the Yemeni law had not been applied to the men detained in the country; the minister promised that they would be brought to justice."

To date, they have not yet been brought before a magistrate or subjected to any legal process, and they continue to live in appalling conditions.

A prisoner who was recently released from the Sana'a Political Security Centre testified that the situation of the Cameroonian detainees has significantly worsened in recent months, to the point that their lives are probably in danger.

Their detention without due legal process is arbitrary and undeniably contrary to legal norms in force in the country, as well as international human rights standards. Al-Karama is following the situation closely, and calls for their release or immediate placement under the protection of the law, as well as humane treatment irrespective of the outcome.