Osama bin Laden spent his last days as a henpecked husband.

The Al Qaeda leader succeeded in hiding from the Americans for a decade following 9/11...but apparently could not escape his warring wives.

All three lived with him in his three-storey Pakistani hideout along with eight children and five grandchildren.

His youngest - and favourite - wife shared his bedroom, while his second wife was one floor down.

The trouble started when his eldest wife, Saudi-born Khairiah Saber, was suspected by the others of seeking to betray the terror leader.

Witnesses said the family strife took its toll on the 54-year-old and he seemed to have aged beyond his years by the time of his death last May at the hands of US special forces.

There was also concern over his mental health and a kidney or stomach condition.

The startling picture of bin Laden's life in the Abbottabad compound comes from Brigadier Shaukat Qadir, a retired Pakistani army officer who spent months researching last May's assassination.

From interview transcripts he found out that there was bad blood between Khairiah, who married bin Laden in the late 1980s, and his youngest wife, Amal Ahmed Abdel-Fatah al-Sada, because of the favouritism.

Amal, from Yemen, was 19 when she married bin Laden in 1999. She was shot in the leg in the American raid.

She had fled with the terror chief from Afghanistan into Pakistan following the September 11 attacks.

Khairiah crossed into Iran along with other bin Laden relatives and Al Qaeda figures. There is no evidence she had any role in bin Laden's death.

Osama bin Laden, who had two other marriages that ended in divorce, fathered more than 20 children.

- DAILY MAIL