The man who shot two people dead at a day centre for disabled people in Albasserdam in May 2022 has been jailed for life for the killings, and for the murder of a cobbler in Vlissingen two days earlier.

The public prosecutor had called for a 30-year sentence to be followed by treatment in a psychiatric clinic.

But the Rotterdam court said the combination did not guarantee a safe return to ordinary society and that life is “the only appropriate punishment in this case”.

“You were on the farm for two minutes, two minutes in which you turned the world upside down for many people… your gruesome crimes brought colossal suffering,” the judge said at Friday’s sentencing session.

S was found guilty of three murders, two attempted weapons, threatening behaviour and the illegal possession of weapons.

S who is 39 and comes from Oud-Alblas, a village near Dordrecht shot dead a care worker and a 16-year-old girl at the farm and seriously injured two other people in May 2023. It later transpired that he had shot dead a cobbler in Vlissingen two days previously to test out his new weapon.

S himself had been a patient at the farm but was banned from attending sessions after it transpired he had a relationship with a young girl there in 2017.

He told the court during May’s hearing that ‘I know I’m behind it.’ He told the court that he had seen images in his head for years of killing himself and other people.

Currently in the Netherlands, life sentences mean just that, but since 2016, cases can be assessed after 25 years for possible release.

There are currently around 35 prisoners serving life sentences in Dutch prisons, including several gangland murderers and Mohammed Bouyeri, who murdered filmmaker Theo van Gogh in 2004.