Saera Tithi Khan is a Bangladesh

Bangladesh

Bangladesh , officially the People's Republic of Bangladesh is a sovereign state located in South Asia. It is bordered by India on all sides except for a small border with Burma to the far southeast and by the Bay of Bengal to the south...

i-Norwegian

Norway

Norway , officially the Kingdom of Norway, is a Nordic unitary constitutional monarchy whose territory comprises the western portion of the Scandinavian Peninsula, Jan Mayen, and the Arctic archipelago of Svalbard and Bouvet Island. Norway has a total area of and a population of about 4.9 million...

 politician for the Labour Party

Norwegian Labour Party

The Labour Party is a social-democratic political party in Norway. It is the senior partner in the current Norwegian government as part of the Red-Green Coalition, and its leader, Jens Stoltenberg, is the current Prime Minister of Norway....

.

She was elected to the Norwegian Parliament from Oslo

Oslo

Oslo is a municipality, as well as the capital and most populous city in Norway. As a municipality , it was established on 1 January 1838. Founded around 1048 by King Harald III of Norway, the city was largely destroyed by fire in 1624. The city was moved under the reign of Denmark–Norway's King...

 in 2005. She had previously served as a deputy representative during the term 2001–2005. She was the only member of the Storting of immigrant background, until October 2007 when Akhtar Chaudhry

Akhtar Chaudhry

Haque Nawaz Akhtar Chaudhry is a Pakistani-Norwegian politician for the Socialist Left Party and 4th Vice President of the Norwegian parliament. Chaudhry came to Norway from Pakistan in 1982....

 took another of the Oslo seats.

On the local level she was a member of Oslo

Oslo

Oslo is a municipality, as well as the capital and most populous city in Norway. As a municipality , it was established on 1 January 1838. Founded around 1048 by King Harald III of Norway, the city was largely destroyed by fire in 1624. The city was moved under the reign of Denmark–Norway's King...

 city council from 1999 to 2005.

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 Storting, Thorbjørn Jagland

Thorbjørn Jagland

is a Norwegian politician for the Labour Party, currently serving as the Secretary-General of the Council of Europe...

, refused to pay these phone bills because of the extremely large 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 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

International Security Assistance Force

The International Security Assistance Force is a NATO-led security mission in Afghanistan established by the United Nations Security Council on 20 December 2001 by Resolution 1386 as envisaged by the Bonn Agreement...

 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

Psychic

A psychic is a person who professes an ability to perceive information hidden from the normal senses through extrasensory perception , or is said by others to have such abilities. It is also used to describe theatrical performers who use techniques such as prestidigitation, cold reading, and hot...

 advice services. The morning after these revelations, October 8, 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".

In a curious turn of events, the Norwegian soap opera

Soap opera

A soap opera, sometimes called "soap" for short, is an ongoing, episodic work of dramatic fiction presented in serial format on radio or as television programming. The name soap opera stems from the original dramatic serials broadcast on radio that had soap manufacturers, such as Procter & Gamble,...

 "Hotel Cæsar

Hotel Cæsar

Hotel Cæsar is a Norwegian soap opera that has been broadcast Monday to Friday on TV 2 since 1998 . It was created by Swedish duo Peter Emanuel Falck and Christian Wikander...

" had a plot line about a person calling psychic advisers on his employer's expense only weeks before reports of Khan's phone use appeared in the press.