A 43-year-old woman from IJsselstein should be jailed for seven years for stabbing her 16-year-old daughter to death in January, the public prosecution department told a court in Utrecht on Tuesday.

Chahira ben M killed Mirjam after stabbing her once in the heart and once in the stomach following an angry dispute about her daughter’s behaviour, triggered by a row about messages on her mobile phone.

The public prosecutor called for a seven year sentence, saying that although the woman had deliberately killed her daughter, she had not planned it in advance and there was no question of the death being an honour killing.

The mother was becoming increasingly concerned about her daughter’s behaviour, the prosecutor said. She was increasingly leading her own life, her school reports were deteriorating, she may have been using drugs and was running with a bad crowd.

Earlier, another daughter urged the court to give her mother as short a sentence as possible.

‘Then we can continue with our lives,’ she said. ‘We will not get our Mirjam back but please don’t keep our mother away from us much longer.’ Her mother is not a ‘cold blooded murderer’, she is quoted as saying by RTL news.