A father and his two sons who shot four people dead at a cannabis cultivation supply shop in Enschede in 2018 have each been jailed for life.

The three, all Serbian nationals who live in the Netherlands, should be given life sentences because they shot the others in cold blood and had planned to do so, the public prosecutor said during the trial in September.

The four victims were found in a property on an industrial estate in Enschede which was home to a company selling equipment for growing plants.

It later emerged that two of the victims were being investigated by police in connection with the seizure of 17 kilos of marijuana on the premises earlier in the year. One of the men was a sales rep for a plant feed company who was ‘in the wrong place at the wrong time’.

Currently in the Netherlands, life sentences mean just that, but cases are assessed after 25 years for possible release. There are currently around 30 prisoners serving life sentences in Dutch prisons, including several gangland murderers and Mohammed Bouyeri, who murdered filmmaker Theo van Gogh in 2004.