The scientific community, AIDS activists, and the Libyan government would do well to recognize that the political and diplomatic import of the case of the Benghazi Six involves a great deal more than the lives of five Bulgarian nurses and a Palestinian physician. At stake are some of the most profound political issues of our time: terrorism, nuclear proliferation, the freedom of movement of health-care workers and scientists, and the Biological Weapons Convention. Although human rights advocates rightly decry the physical torture these individuals have been subjected to, and their death sentences, it is critical to recognize that the unfortunate Benghazi Six—Bulgarian nurses Snezhana Dimitrova, Nasya Nenova, Valentina Siropulo, Valya Chervenyashka, and Kristiyana Valtcheva, and Palestinian physician Ahmed Ashraf Al Hadjudi—are pawns in a far larger game.