'Girls dressed as Santa at bunga bunga parties'

A series of photographs taken by one of the women showed an unmade bed surrounded by pictures of Berlusconi as a young man, the investigator said.u00a0At a hearing in the trial in Milan, another policeman testified that the young woman at the centre of the trial was indeed a prostitute.

Moroccan-born Karima El Mahroug was 17 when she first met Berlusconi.u00a0The age of consent in Italy is 14 and having sex with a prostitute is not illegal but paying for sex with a girl who is under 18 is a crime.

If convicted, Berlusconi faces a maximum sentence of three years in prison on that charge and 12 years for abuse of power after he allegedly put pressure on the police to have El-Mahroug released from custody in an unrelated case.

Thirty-three women who allegedly attended the parties have been called as witnesses by the prosecution and the defence has said it wants to call George Clooney and Cristiano Ronaldo to discreditu00a0El-Mahroug's testimony.u00a0El-Mahroug told investigators she had met Hollywood heartthrob Clooney at one of Berlusconi's parties and had also slept with Real Madrid football star Ronaldo for money.u00a0

The two men both deny the claims.u00a0Italian media earlier quoted an attendee saying that one of the women once did a striptease in a nurse's costume as Berlusconi held up a crucifix.u00a0Two other attendees said they had witnessed topless girls performing oral sex on a statue during erotic games around the dinner table.

Silvio Berlusconi believed Karima el Mahroug when she told him she was the granddaughter of then Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak. His lawyers insisted he was convinced by the story and intervened to have the woman released from a theft charge because he feared her detention could cause a diplomatic incident between the two countries.u00a0