Al-Fassi was arrested in late June, as part of a crackdown on women's rights activists[10] that in May included the arrests of Aziza al-Yousef, Loujain al-Hathloul, Eman al-Nafjan, Aisha al-Mana and Madeha al-Ajroush.[11] Her arrest took place days before the lifting of the Saudi ban on women driving.[10] On 16 January 2019, Khaled Abou El Fadl, Noam Chomsky and 213 other academics sent an appeal to King Salman of Saudi Arabia describing al-Fassi's academic and women's rights achievements and calling for her and the other imprisoned women's rights activists to be freed.[22]