Local residents watch as authorities use heavy machinery to demolish the compound of Osama bin Laden in Abbottabad, Pakistan on Feb. 26, 2012.Anjum Naveed/AP
Osama bin Laden spent his last weeks in a house divided, amid wives riven by suspicions. On the top floor, sharing his bedroom, was his youngest wife and favourite. The trouble came when his eldest wife showed up and moved into the bedroom on the floor below.
Others in the family, crammed into the three-storey villa compound where Mr. bin Laden would eventually be killed in a May 2 U.S. raid, were convinced that the eldest wife intended to betray the al-Qaeda leader.
The picture of the bin Laden family's life in the Abbottabad compound comes from Brigadier Shaukat Qadir, a retired Pakistani army officer who spent months researching the events and says he was given rare access to transcripts of Pakistani intelligence's interrogation of Mr. bin Laden's youngest wife, who was detained in the raid.
He was also given rare entry into the villa, which was sealed after the raid and demolished last month. Pictures he took, which he allowed The Associated Press to see, showed the villa's main staircase, splattered with blood. Other pictures show windows protected by iron grilles and the seven-metre-high walls around the villa.
Brig. Qadir's research gives one of the most extensive descriptions of the arrangements in the bin Laden hideout when U.S. Navy SEAL commandos stormed in, killing Mr. bin Laden and four others. His account is based on accounts by an official of Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence agency who escorted him on a tour of the villa, the interrogation transcription he was allowed to read, and interviews with other ISI officials and al-Qaeda-linked militants and tribesmen in the Afghan-Pakistan border region.
The compound where Mr. bin Laden had lived since mid-2005 was a crowded place, with 28 residents – including Mr. bin Laden, his three wives, eight of his children and five of his grandchildren. The bin Laden children ranged in age from his 24-year-old son Khaled, who was killed in the raid, to a three-year-old born during their time in Abbottabad. Mr. Bin Laden's courier, the courier's brother and their wives and children also lived in the compound.
At 54, Mr. bin Laden himself seemed aged beyond his years, with suspected kidney or stomach diseases, and there were worries over his mental health, Brig. Qadir said he was told by ISI officials and an al-Qaeda member he interviewed in the border regions.
Mr. bin Laden lived and died on the third floor. One room he shared with his youngest wife, Amal Ahmed Abdel-Fatah al-Sada, a Yemeni who was 19 when she married the al-Qaeda leader in 1999. Another wife, Siham Saber, lived in another room on the same floor.
The arrival of his eldest wife, Saudi-born Khairiah Saber, in early 2011 stirred up the household, Amal said in her ISI interrogation, according to Brig. Qadir.
There was already bad blood between Khairiah, who married Mr. bin Laden in the late 1980s, and Amal because of Mr. bin Laden's favouritism for the younger Yemeni woman, Brig. Qadir said he was told by tribal leaders who knew the family.
Even ISI officials who questioned Khairiah after the raid were daunted by her.
"She is so aggressive that she borders on being intimidating," Brig. Qadir said he was told by an ISI interrogator.
Amal stayed close to Mr. bin Laden as he fled Afghanistan into Pakistan following the 2001 U.S. invasion. She took an active role in arranging protection for Mr. bin Laden and he wanted her by his side, the tribal leaders told Brig. Qadir.
Khairiah fled Afghanistan in 2001 into Iran along with other bin Laden relatives and al-Qaeda figures. She and others were held under house arrest in Iran until 2010, when Tehran let them leave in a swap for an Iranian diplomat kidnapped in Pakistan's frontier city of Peshawar.
Khairiah showed up at Abbottabad in February or March of 2011 and moved into the villa's second floor, Amal told her interrogators.
Khalid, Mr. bin Laden's son with Siham, was suspicious, according to Amal's account. He repeatedly asked Khairiah why she had come. At one point, she told him, "I have one final duty to perform for my husband." Khalid immediately told his father what she had said and warned that she intended to betray him.
Amal, who shared Khalid's fears, said Mr. bin Laden was also suspicious but was unconcerned, acting as if fate would decide, according to Brig. Qadir's recounting of the interrogation transcript.
There is no evidence Khairiah had any role in Mr. bin Laden's end. Accounts by Pakistani and U.S. intelligence officials since the May 2 raid have made no mention of her. Instead, U.S. officials have said the courier inadvertently led the CIA to the Abbottabad villa after they uncovered him in a monitored phone call.
The courier, a Pakistani known by his pseudonym Abu Ahmed al-Kuwaiti, lived with his wife and four children on the villa's first floor. His brother, his wife and three children lived in a guest house in the compound. Mr. al-Kuwaiti, his brother and the brother's wife were killed in the raid.
Mr. bin Laden had two marriages before Khairiah that ended in divorce and had more than 20 children with his various wives.
Amal gave her interrogators details on Mr. bin Laden's movements after fleeing Afghanistan. Her account underscored that Mr. bin Laden did not stay long in Pakistan's tribal-run regions on the border where the United States long presumed he was holed up.
She and Mr. bin Laden hid for several months in 2002 in Salman Talab, a suburb of Kohat, a northwest Pakistani border town. There Mr. bin Laden was visited at least once by Khalid Sheik Mohammed, the 9/11 mastermind arrested in Rawalpindi on March 1, 2003.
Amal said they moved constantly to avoid being spotted and in the summer of 2005 took up residence in the villa in Abbottabad, a town about 50 kilometres from Islamabad and home to a large military base, according to the interrogation transcripts.
ISI officials contacted by the AP refused to comment on Brig. Qadir's account. The wives and bin Laden family members who were in the villa during the raid remain in Pakistani custody.
Brig. Qadir, a 35-year veteran and now a security consultant, took it upon himself to research what happened in the May 2 raid. He relied on contacts in the ISI and in the border regions where he was long based.
An old friend who is an officer in the ISI allowed Brig. Qadir to read the transcripts of the interrogations of Amal. Brig. Qadir asked that the ISI officer not be identified because the information remains classified.
Brig. Qadir said he was allowed to visit the villa four times, most recently in November. He described Mr. bin Laden's bedroom, saying one wall was peppered with bullet holes and splattered with blood, which his ISI escort told him was from Amal, who was shot in the leg during the raid. There was also blood on the ceiling, which Brig. Qadir presumed was from Mr. bin Laden, who was shot through the eye.
He said he was struck by the lack of defences – no basement, no warning system, no escape routes. "It was a death trap if it were ever attacked."
Kathy Gannon is AP Special Correspondent for Pakistan and Afghanistan