Mistrust ran rampant between Osama's wives in Abbottabad

Islamabad, Mar 8 (ANI): A retired Pakistan Army brigadier has claimed that there was mistrust between Osama bin Laden's wives, with one of them even accusing the other of betraying the killed al-Qaeda leader by passing on information to American intelligence.

The retired Army brigadier, named only as Qadir, has said that tensions erupted between bin Laden's fifth, youngest, and favoured wife, Amal Ahmed al-Sadah, and Khairiah Saber, an older woman who occupied a separate floor in the cramped Abbottabad house.

In interrogation, Sadah accused her rival of having betrayed their husband to American intelligence, The New York Times reports.

Sadah had also told Pakistani interrogators that her husband underwent a kidney transplant operation in 2002, but the claim raises questions about who was helping him.

She had further claimed that her husband shaved his beard and disguised himself as an ailing Pashtun elder as he leapfrogged between safe houses across northwestern Pakistan, eventually re-growing the beard after finally settling in the Abbottabad house in 2005.

Bin Laden, mastermind of the 11 September 2001 attacks and the world's most wanted man, was killed in a US operation in north-western Pakistan on May 2 last year. (ANI)