Qadir said in the aftermath of the US raid on Pakistan territory, along with many of his countrymen, he felt "ashamed". In addition to completing and circulating his 64-page report, he has given evidence to the official government inquiry looking into the affair.
Several of Qadir's suggestions seem fanciful. He says, for instance, that bin Laden's courier, Abu Ahmed al-Kuwaiti, may also have tried to give up the location of the al-Qaeda leader. He cites as supporting evidence his belief that neither the courier nor his brother picked up their automatic weapons to defend bin Laden when American troops stormed the building. Other conclusions, such as bin Laden's break with his former deputy Ayman al-Zawahiri fit with what other analysts believe.
If correct, Qadir's account also provides new detail about the way bin Laden made his way to Abbottabad from South Waziristan, via Swat and Haripur, arriving at the compound in the Bilal Town neighbourhood in the spring of 2005. He reveals that Pakistani officials found supplies of imported food, including dates, in the house. He makes no conclusions about whom, if anyone, within the Pakistani establishment was aware of his whereabouts.
Yet it is the detail about the domestic discord within bin Laden's home that will catch the eye of many.
While bin Laden lived on the third floor of the property with his youngest wife, Amal Ahmed Abdel-Fatah al-Sada, a Yemeni who was 19 when they married in 1999, another wife, Siham Saber, lived in another room on the same floor.
That arrangement seems to work until the arrival of his eldest wife, Saudi-born Khairiah Saber, in early 2011. She had long been jealous of the youngest wife, said Qadir, and was a fierce character. In his account, the retired officer quotes an ISI interrogator who questioned the eldest wife, saying: "She is so aggressive that she borders on being intimidating. Short of torturing her, we cannot get her to admit to anything. And, we will not torture women or children."
Amal stayed close to bin Laden as he fled Afghanistan into Pakistan after the 2001 US invasion. She took an active role in arranging protection for him and bin Laden wanted her by his side, the tribal leaders told Qadir.
Khairiah fled Afghanistan in 2001 into Iran 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 last year and moved into the villa's second floor, Amal told her interrogators.
Khalid, 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 bin Laden was also suspicious but was not concerned, acting as if fate would decide, according to Qadir's recounting of the interrogation transcript.
Bin Laden, who was 54, had two marriages before he married Khairiah Saber. Both ended in divorce. He has more than 20 children with his various wives.
One of his sons Khalid, was shot dead at the Abbottabad compound, which the authorities knocked-down last month. Officials, deeply embarrassed about the entire affair, said it had been done to prevent it becoming a shrine.
- Independent, AP
