An Italian court has ruled George Clooney and Cristiano Ronaldo can be called as witnesses in ex-prime minister Silvio Berlusconi’s trial for having sex with an underage prostitute.
Lawyers for Berlusconi want the Hollywood heart-throb and Real Madrid football star to help defend their client from charges of paying for sex with a 17-year-old girl and then pressuring police to get her freed from custody.
The two are being called in an attempt to discredit the woman, Karima El Mahroug, better known by her stage name as “Ruby the Heart Stealer”,
who claims Clooney was at a raunchy party she attended and says she had sex with Ronaldo.
Clooney had already denied the claim and has said that he could testify.
Ronaldo dismissed El Mahroug’s assertion as “totally false”.
The two are among 78 star witnesses including several former government ministers, a Neapolitan singer and two famous starlets being called by the defence, a court official said.
Prosecutors are calling a total of 136 witnesses including Moroccan-born El Mahroug and 32 other young women who attended parties at the former premier’s luxury villa near Milan where the underage sex crime allegedly took place.
During police questioning, extracts from which have been leaked to Italian newspapers, El Mahroug recounted orgies referred to as “Bunga Bunga” parties describing several naked women giving the ageing billionaire lap dances.
Berlusconi faces a maximum of three years in prison for the sex charge and 12 years for abuse of power, after he allegedly abused the power of his office to get El Mahroug released when she was arrested in an unrelated case.
by Buford Balony
