Jurors have been told of the gruesome moment a passer-by discovered the body of an alleged murder victim lying in a Dalston car park.

“Jealous husband” Huseyin Akkoyun, 47, is accused of strangling and running over his estranged wife’s new lover, and his friend of 15 years, Mehmet Degerli, on the night of June 7.

He and his nephew Mustafa Alparslan, 20, of Remington Road, Stoke Newington, deny murder.

It is alleged Semra Yumak and Mehmet Degerli began to see each other privately in February, and their friendship turned into an affair.

Yesterday morning Omar Knaz described how he spotted Mr Degerli lying in the car park in Sandringham Road just after 1am on his way home from a sailing trip in France.

He said: “He was missing a shoe. I couldn’t see breathing. My decision then was he wasn’t alive. It looked suspicious.”

On Thursday Ms Yumak was accused of having run over her lover herself.

Jurors were shown photos of damage to the base of her Hyundai. But she said:

“I do have proof of that damage and it’s from a long time ago – I went into a post.”

Defence barrister for Akkoyun Bernard Richmond QC asked: “The post you hit, was it Mehmet? I am not suggesting it was deliberate. Did you run him over when he was lying on the ground?

“Were you driving your car in a panic because you had been found out, and thought you would lose your children?”

He continued: “You knew your relationship with Mehmet was threatening the security of you and your children and you needed to put a stop to it.

“In the Turkish community, if a woman is having a relationship with a married man the woman is in a great deal of trouble isn’t she?”

“Not in my time,” she replied, denying the claims.

Alparslan’s barrister Charles Sherrard QC pointed out inconsistencies in Semra’s evidence, who initiatlly told police the last time she had seen Mr Degerli was at 3pm on June 7.

She later told them they had met in Sandringham Road for a rendez-vous in her car at 10.30pm and drove to Navarino Road.

“You told the police that night you didn’t hear or see anything untoward,” said Mr Sherrard.

She replied: “True.”

“All that time the one thing you’re meant to be doing is assisting policemen to identify who could have been responsible for killing Mehmet,” said Mr Sherrard.

“I believe I done that,” she said.

Semra described how she regarded her nephew Alparslan “like a son” who she would take shopping and for whom she bought his first computer, until her relationship with her sister-in-law and his mother broke down eight years ago.

“He was studious. A hard working young boy. He speaks English beautifully and he is the first within the wider family who went to university,” said Mr Sherrard.

“He’s a great boy,” she replied.

“He’s not somebody who would ever get into trouble,” he continued.

She replied: “I don’t believe he would do.”

The trial continues.