According to letters released by the US Office of the Director of National Intelligence that were recovered during the US Navy SEAL raid on bin Laden's hideout in the Pakistani garrison city of Abbottabad, by early 2011 the brothers were fed up with all the pressure that came from protecting and serving the world's most wanted terrorist.
Worried about the CIA hunting for him, bin Laden was confined to one building inside the large compound in Abbottabad, which the brothers had moved him to in 2005.
Bin Laden was completely reliant on the two brothers both to maintain any semblance of control over al-Qaeda and its far-flung affiliates and also for the daily needs.
Indeed, the documents portray bin Laden as entirely dependent on his two bodyguards, running out of money and paranoid that even his family members might have concealed tracking devices to home in on him.
Bin Laden confided to one of his wives that the brothers who protected him were "exhausted" by all the pressures on them and were planning to quit.
Things got so bad with his two protectors that on January 14, 2011, bin Laden took the unusual step of writing the brothers a formal letter, despite the fact that they lived only yards away from him on the Abbottabad compound.
Bin Laden then wrote a letter to one of his confidantes asking if he knew of any Pakistanis who could be trusted with "complete confidence" who might replace the two brothers as his liaisons to the outside world.
Relations between bin Laden and the two brothers deteriorated to the point that they entered into a written agreement that they would separate sometime in 2011 or early 2012 and that bin Laden and his family would move away from the compound in Abbottabad.
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