In the trial of the theft of jewels from the Green Vault, the Dresden Regional Court on Tuesday rejected an application by the defense of one of the six defendants to separate the proceedings.
The presiding judge explained that the network of relationships between the men, who all belong to the partly criminal Berlin Remmo clan, can only be clarified in a joint process.
The hearing has been running since January, so far the court has set further dates until the end of the year.
It cannot be ruled out that further incriminating details against the accused would emerge during the course of the trial, the judge said.
Stephen Locke
Correspondent for Saxony and Thuringia based in Dresden.
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The defense attorneys had previously tried several times to separate the proceedings because they considered the evidence against their 24-year-old client to be exhausted.
He is currently serving a four-and-a-half-year prison sentence for stealing the 100-kilogram gold coin from Berlin's Bode Museum.
He is the only one of the defendants whose DNA was not found at the crime scene.
In addition, the lawyers justified their application with an alleged alibi, according to which their client could not have been in Dresden at the time of the burglary because he was being treated in the emergency room of the Neukölln State Hospital in Berlin.
However, they only announced this half a year after the start of the process.
A police officer later testified about the origin of the revolver that the perpetrators had carried with them during the burglary.
The .357 caliber Taurus Magnum weapon was discovered in the burned-out getaway vehicle.
A year before the burglary, a perpetrator from Serbia had stolen the gun from a safe along with money cards and then sold it in Berlin – in the immediate vicinity of the apartment of one of the accused.
However, this is out of the question as a buyer, his defense attorneys said.
Her client was in custody at the time.