Saera Tithi Khan (born 23 April 1979 in

Oslo Oslo ( or ; ) is the capital and most populous city of Norway. It constitutes both a county and a municipality. The municipality of Oslo had a population of in 2022, while the city's greater urban area had a population of 1,064,235 in 2022 ...

) is a

Bangladesh Bangladesh, officially the People's Republic of Bangladesh, is a country in South Asia. It is the List of countries and dependencies by population, eighth-most populous country in the world and among the List of countries and dependencies by ...

i- Norwegian politician for the Labour Party. She was elected to the

Parliament of Norway The Storting ( ; ) is the supreme legislature of Norway, established in 1814 by the Constitution of Norway. It is located in Oslo. The unicameral parliament has 169 members and is elected every four years based on party-list proportional represe ...

from

in 2005. She served as a deputy representative from 2001 to 2005. She was the only member of parliament with immigrant background before Akhtar Chaudhry won a seat, representing Oslo, in the October 2007 elections. She did not seek reelection in 2009. On the local level she was a member of

city council from 1999 to 2005. She did not seek reelection in 2009 after she was cited for calling fortune tellers from her office phone.

Personal

Khan was born to an educated family. Her father Kamaluddin Khan went to England to study law before he settled in Norway in 1968. The eldest child of the family, Saera has two younger brothers. Saera is doing her MA in Social Economics and Politics. Her mother teaches at a school for disabled children in Norway.

2008 psychic phone call controversy

Controversy erupted in late September 2008 when it was revealed that Khan had racked up extremely high phone bills using the mobile phone with which she was provided for free by the Parliament. The president of the Parliament,

Thorbjørn Jagland Thorbjørn Jagland ( né Johansen; , 5 November 1950) is a Norwegian politician from the Labour Party. He served as the secretary general of the Council of Europe from 2009 to 2019. He served as the prime minister of Norway from 1996 to 1997, a ...

, refused to pay these phone bills because of the amounts involved. First, Khan claimed that the reason for the high bills was that she had called her family abroad. When this was shown to be false, she instead claimed that she had a boyfriend who was a special operations soldier, and that the phone bills originated from

satellite telephone A satellite telephone, satellite phone or satphone is a type of mobile phone that connects to other phones or the telephone network by radio link through satellites orbiting the Earth instead of terrestrial cell sites, as cellphones do. Therefor ...

calls to this boyfriend, triggering an investigation by the Norwegian Army because Norwegian soldiers are not allowed to receive private satellite calls while on duty. The result of this investigation was that the Army denied that Khan's boyfriend was a Norwegian soldier, upon which Khan told media that the alleged boyfriend was attached to the British

ISAF The International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) was a multinational military mission in Afghanistan from 2001 to 2014. It was established by United Nations Security Council Resolution 1386 according to the Bonn Agreement, which outlined t ...

force, and that his identity could not be disclosed for security reasons. The British Ministry of Defence subsequently denied that soldiers in the ISAF force were allowed to receive satellite phone calls. Following these revelations, Khan admitted that the phone bills were not due to overseas satellite calls, but rather from calls to Norwegian premium-rate numbers offering

psychic A psychic is a person who claims to use powers rooted in parapsychology, such as extrasensory perception (ESP), to identify information hidden from the normal senses, particularly involving telepathy or clairvoyance; or who performs acts that a ...

advice services. The morning after these revelations, 8 October, Khan went on sick leave and announced later in the day that she is resigning as candidate for the 2009 parliamentary elections. Khan has repaid the part of her phone bills that exceeds reasonable use for a member of Parliament. The BBC reported on 10 October 2008 that she had made 793 calls and that "her calls became so frequent that many fortune-tellers told her to stop ringing".

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{{DEFAULTSORT:Khan, Saera Tithi 1979 births Living people Politicians from Oslo Labour Party (Norway) politicians University of Oslo alumni Norwegian Muslims Norwegian people of Bangladeshi descent Women members of the Storting 21st-century Norwegian women politicians Members of the Storting 2005–2009