Two men have been sentenced to life imprisonment for a double gangland shooting in Amsterdam in 2012, the Telegraaf reports on Friday.

The court ruled Adil A (26) en Anouar B (34) shot dead two men in December 2012 in the west of the city. They were also found guilty of firing Kalashnikov rifles at police on motorbikes during the high-speed chase that followed the killings.

The sentence is in line with public prosecution demands. ‘There is no place for these people in society,’ the Telegraaf quotes the judges as saying. Life sentences are comparatively rare in the Netherlands.

A third man was jailed for 100 days for possessing an illegal weapon which was used in the shooting.

The actual target, named as Benaouf A, got away but two men in the car with him, aged 28 and 21, were killed. The killings are thought to be connected to a gangland dispute over cocaine.

There has been a spate of killings in the capital involving the so-called Moccro mafia since that date.

At the end of last year, another man connected to the murders who had fled to Morocco in an effort to escape justice was jailed for 20 years.