Peter Benenson

Peter Benenson (London, the July 31st 1921 - Oxford, the February 25th 2005), was an English lawyer and the founder of Amnesty International.

Biography

Only sons of Harold Solomon and Flore Benenson, Peter Benenson was born in London in an Jewish family. His/her father, officer in the army, died when Benenson was nine years old. To the age of sixteen, with classmates, it contributes to establish funds to come to assistance of orphan children victims of the Spanish civil war. It took the name of Benenson like homage to his maternal grandfather, Grigori Benenson.

It is registered then at the university of Balliol, with Oxford, but the second world war stops its studies. Of 1941 with 1945, Benenson works with the Bletchley Park, an English manor which was the general headquarter of the British intelligence services during the Second world war; the cryptologists combined there deciphered the German messages coded with Enigma and the machine of Lorenz. Peter Benenson meets there his first wife, Margaret Anderson. After its demobilization in 1946, Benenson starts to exert its lawyer trade before joining the workers party. In 1957, with a group of lawyers, it founds " JUSTICE" , an organization for the defense of the human rights. In 1958, it converted with the Catholicism. The following year, it falls ill and is withdrawn for convalescence in Italy.

Amnesty International

In 1961, Benenson is shocked by an article of newspaper which reports the arrest of two students condemned to seven years of prison to have carried a toast with the Liberté during the dictatorship of Salazar. Revolted, it launches in the newspaper To observe it (whose writer was David Astor) a call in favor " of the prisoner oubliés". The lawyer then receives thousands of letters of support. The call, mentioned again in the newspapers of the whole world, required of the readers to write letters to protest against the arrest of the two young men. To coordinate this countryside, Benenson founds in July 1961 association Amnesty International with the assistance, inter alia, of Sean MacBridge and Eric Baker.

Initially appointed general secretary of AI, Peter Benenson withdraws his candidature in 1964 because of its bad health. It deals with association until 1996, before taking a certain retreat. He dies in 2005 at the hospital of John Radcliffe, Oxford, at the 83 years age.

External bonds

Amnesty International France

the article on the founder of Amnesty International and the reasons of its creation.

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