Osama bin Laden may have been betrayed to the US by a jealous wife who was angered by his preference towards a younger woman, reports say.

There was reportedly a poisonous mistrust between Osama's three wives towards the end, with the oldest of them being accused of betraying him to US intelligence.

Brigadier Shaukat Qadir, a retired Pakistani army officer, has researched the late al-Qaida leader, describing him as a feeble figure, struggling with the onset of dementia aged just 54 and unable to keep the women in his life from quarreling in his compound.

According to Qadir, Osama bin Laden's family got on well for years, but things changed in March 2011 when bin Laden's older Saudi wife, Khairiah, unexpectedly turned up for the first time since the family was separated in late 2001.

"The younger two wives had lived together happily. It was only when Khairiah arrived that these other two had a problem with her,"Qadir has explained, as cited by The Daily Telegraph.

The brigadier is convinced Khairiah betrayed her husband, since she was jealous of Amal Abdulfattah, a Yemeni wife whom Osama married back in 1999 when she was just 19.

Osama bin Laden was hunted down in a US assassination raid on May 1 2011 and subsequently buried at sea.