A court in Munich Wednesday heard the 385th hearing of the trial over crimes of the National Socialist Underground (NSU), a neo-Nazi gang accused of killing eight ethnic Turks in Germany. The lengthy trial in which the sole surviving member of the gang and her accomplices are defendants is likely to be prolonged as the defendants fight for the judges' recusal.

Andre E., one of the defendants, asked again for the recusal of the judges after his request was rejected in Tuesday's hearing. The court adjourned the trial to Nov. 9.

His string of applications to the court for the recusal in the past six hearings already dragged down the process. Prosecutors are asking for 12 years in prison for Andre E.

The trial started four years ago and has been subject to criticism for not digging deeper into the connections of the three-member gang. Lawyers for the families of the victims had accused federal prosecutors of insisting that the NSU was only an isolated cell of three neo-Nazis who killed a Greek man and a German policewoman along with eight ethnic Turks between 2000 and 2007. The gang is also responsible for bank robberies and a bombing in a predominantly Turkish-German neighborhood.

The group was uncovered in 2011, when two members, Uwe Mundlos and Uwe Bohnhardt, died after an unsuccessful bank robbery, and police found guns and propaganda material in their apartment. Beate Zschaepe, the only woman and surviving member of the group, is standing trial along with four others accused of providing logistical support to the neo-Nazi group.

Lawyers representing the NSU victims have argued that the group had enjoyed support from a wider network of far-right extremists in Germany and had contacts with domestic intelligence agency informants. They accuse prosecutors of blocking a wider investigation to protect the informants and intelligence officers suspected of having information on the NSU before 2011.

Since the late 1990s, Germany's domestic intelligence agency, the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution (BfV), recruited various informants from the far right who were believed to have had contacts with the trio. Officials insisted they had no prior information about the existence of the neo-Nazi cell and its role in the killings. Up until 2011, German police and intelligence services dismissed any racial motive for the murders, instead treating immigrant families as suspects with alleged connections to mafia groups and drug traffickers. A verdict in the trial is not expected before the end of the year. The main suspect, Zschaepe, has so far denied any role in the killings and tried to lay the blame on her boyfriend, who was also a member of the group.

Germany's ombudswoman for the murder victims has called for a deeper investigation into the killings.

"We are still left with a very thick layer. We have to dig deeper to uncover the truth," Barbara John told Anadolu Agency (AA) in a recent interview. John said the neo-Nazi group must have had wider support than what was uncovered by federal prosecutors. "For their attacks, the NSU members chose uncrowded places where they could easily run away. They needed help from their supporters to identify these places. We still do not know who these people were or who supported them," she said.

The case was muddled with allegations that German intelligence and security forces turned a blind eye to the gang until their accidental discovery in 2011, and that officials sought to destroy evidence once the gang's connections to informants from the far-right scene were revealed. The NSU's crimes were only discovered after the deaths of Bohnhardt and Mundlos through a chilling video found in possession of the two men showing the crimes accompanied by a bizarre Pink Panther animation.

The discovery of the NSU shed light on how police, either deliberately or mistakenly, blamed domestic disputes in the Turkish-German community for the murders. Blunders on the part of the authorities investigating the NSU or coincidences that led up to the destruction of critical evidence have also been piling up in the case since the gang's existence was made public. In one case, documents showing intelligence's connections to informants aware of the NSU's existence were damaged in floods while some key witnesses died during the trial - the deaths were linked to illnesses and accidents.

Critics of the case also claim police and intelligence services had hired people from the neo-Nazi scene to serve as informants and have tried to erase their connections to the NSU case. The two families of the murder victims recently sued Germany for damages over the series of mishaps in the case.