Three men who shot dead four others at a cannabis cultivation supply shop in Enschede in November 2018 should be jailed for life, the public prosecution department told judges in Almelo on Friday.

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.

The suspects, a father and his two sons, killed their victims by shots to the head. This was a ‘cold blooded execution,’ prosecutor Aidan van Veen said during Friday’s hearing, broadcaster NOS reported.

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’.

The motive for the killing has still not been established but money may have been behind it. One of the victims was known to have had €8,000 with him at the time of the shootings but that money has never been found, and he was the first to be shot, NOS said. He may also have had a financial conflict with the suspects, the Telegraaf reported.

The court will give its verdict on November 6.

Currently in the Netherlands, life sentences mean just that, but cases will be 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.