Arusi and his family members experienced several critical events during the era of Muammar Gaddafi. In June 1998, he was detained and sentenced on the grounds that he was allegedly a member of the underground Muslim Brotherhood movement. He spent eight years of a life-sentence in Abu Salim prison. He was released in April 2006. His father also spent some time in Abu Salim in the early 1970s. One of his brothers was killed in Zawiya during the Libyan Civil War. In addition, another brother was fatally beaten and lost an eye during the uprising. Arusi's son Abdulrahman was also jailed for a month in July 2011.