Lawyers for five former Blackwater guards charged with voluntary manslaughter are seeking a government security detail when they travel to Iraq to conduct their own investigation. The Justice Department is pushing back, calling the request “radical” and unnecessary, reports The National Law Journal.

The stakes are high for the government, as more foreign-based criminal allegations take root in federal district courts in the United States, according to The NLJ.

“The experiences of the prosecutors and the FBI in Iraq, and the substantial government resources devoted to their security, illustrate an obvious truth: American lawyers and investigators working in Baghdad face mortal danger,” wrote Steptoe & Johnson LLP partner Mark Hulkower in court papers filed earlier this month. “They require professional protection to assure their survival and to enable them to perform their work.”

The Justice Department responded in court papers filed last week, arguing that the lawyers should use one of the private security contractors working in Iraq.  The Justice lawyers said granting such a request would be an unprecedented and unwarranted exercise of judicial authority.

Judge Ricardo Urbina, of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, spoke in court of his concern for the lawyers’ safety, but defense lawyers following the case told The NLJ that Urbina will likely side with the Justice Department.

“If they want armed bodyguards, by golly, there’s lot of folks who do that,” Puckett & Faraj military lawyer Neal Puckett of Alexandria, Va., told The NLJ.

Puckett, who has traveled to Iraq twice and owns his own body armor and Kevlar helmet, said he saw no basis for granting the request.

The government’s case against the Blackwater guards stems from a deadly shooting in Iraq in Baghdad’s Nisoor Square on Sept. 16, 2007. Seventeen unarmed Iraqi civilians were killed, after guards stopped in an crowded intersection and opened fire. Prosecutors say the guards were unprovoked.

The case is the first under the Military Extraterritorial Jurisdiction Act to be filed against non-Defense Department private contractors.