An Italian court ordered police yesterday to track down “Ruby the Heart Stealer”, the young Moroccan call-girl at the heart of Silvio Berlusconi’s sex trial, after she skipped a court hearing and told her lawyer she had left the country, media reports said.

She sent an SMS saying she is abroad. I don’t know when she will return

Police were told to interrogate her partner and friends as part of their search for Karima El Maghroug, who had been due to take to the stand yesterday in the trial against Berlusconi for abuse of power and buying sex from a minor.

The court in Milan in northern Italy set the new date for the testimony for December 17, providing Ruby can be found in time. The former pole-dancer had told her lawyer in a message that she was abroad and could not attend.

“I tried to contact her but there was no answer. She sent me an SMS saying that she is abroad, but I don’t know any more. I don’t know when she will return,” lawyer Paola Boccardi said.

Boccardi said the text had been sent several days ago. Ageing media magnate Berlusconi has been on trial since April 2011, accused of paying for sex with the underage starlet.

Prosecutors say he also put pressure on police to free her from custody when she was arrested for stealing. Prosecutor Ilda Boccassini accused Berlusconi’s defence of trying to delay the trial for political gains, days after the former premier launched himself back into frontline politics and announced his candidacy for the general election in a couple of months time.

She slammed Ruby’s absence as “a strategy to delay the trial so as to make it through the election campaign” before a verdict, which is expected in the second half of February.