Peter Benenson

Peter Benenson (31 July 1921 – 25 February 2005) was an English lawyer and the founder of human rights group Amnesty International (AI).

Kirsten Sellars on Peter Benenson:
 * Peter James Henry Solomon Benenson was born in London on 31 July 1921. His mother was of Russian Jewish extraction; his father, a British Army officer, died when Peter was young. He enjoyed a privileged upbringing: after being tutored by W.H. Auden, he was educated at Eton College (where he raised funds to rescue young Jews from Germany) and then Balliol College, Oxford. During the war, he worked in military intelligence at the Bletchley Park code-breaking center; after it, he was called to the English Bar and unsuccessfully stood for Parliament as a Labour Party candidate. In 1954 he traveled to Spain on behalf of the Society of Labour Lawyers to observe the trial of Basque trades unionists. Two years later he visited the British colony of Cyprus to advise lawyers representing those who had fallen foul of the authorities. During this period, he founded Justice, the British section of the International Commission of Jurists, and converted to Catholicism – thereafter a strong influence on his life. The founding of Amnesty In 1960 Benenson read that two students had been jailed in Portugal for the “crime” of toasting freedom, and decided to campaign on behalf of those imprisoned for their beliefs. Assisted by influential friends such as fellow lawyer Louis Blom-Cooper, Quaker Eric Baker and editor David Astor, he launched Amnesty in The Observer newspaper on 28 May 1961 (“The Forgotten Prisoners,” p. 21). The campaign proclaimed that it would work impartially on behalf of “prisoners of conscience”, rising above the Cold War fray by taking on cases equally from the East, the West, and the third world. As Benenson explained in the book Persecution 1961: “If [Amnesty] were ever to fall under the control of one country, ideology or creed, it will have failed in its purpose” (p. 152).

Dodgy relationships
While setting up Amnesty International to become an human rights activist organization, Benenson often met with British government officials to manage the way violations were reported. Amnesty was initially covertly funded by the British government. Benenson also founded Justice, the British section of the International Commission of Jurists -- a CIA-covertly funded project.

External Resources

 * Winner, David. Peter Benenson: Taking a Stand Against Injustice. Milwaukee, Wis.: Gareth Stevens, 1991.
 * Hallam M. Tennyson - friend