Mrs Goren, speaking through a Turkish interpreter, also told the jury: 'After Tulay went missing, he attempted to beat me up a few times.'

She said she repeatedly confronted her husband about her daughter's disappearance, increasingly so since her younger daughter was killed in a car crash in 2006.

'I was saying it to his face openly, frankly. I was saying to him, "You swallowed Tulay". I was saying, "She is alive, in your tummy". I kept saying it,' Mrs Goren told the court.

'During the last few years I started saying it more. Since I lost Hatice I started saying it even more.'

Mehmet, 49, of Woodford Green, north east London, together with Cuma Goren, 42, of Walthamstow, east London, and Ali Goren, 56, also of Walthamstow, deny murdering her on January 7 1999.

They also deny conspiracy to murder her boyfriend Halil Unal between May 1998 and February 1999.