Peter Benenson

Peter James Henry Solomon Benenson was born in London into a prominent Anglo-Jewish family, the grandson of Russian-Jewish financier Grigori Benenson and son of Harold Solomon and Flora Benenson. Educated at Eton and Balliol College, Oxford, Benenson served during World War II at Bletchley Park as a codebreaker in the Army's cryptographic section before qualifying as a barrister in 1948.

As a lawyer, Benenson joined the Society of Labour Lawyers and attended trials of political dissidents in Francoist Spain, apartheid South Africa, and communist Hungary as an independent legal observer. In November 1960, while riding the London Underground, Benenson read a small newspaper article recounting how two young students in Lisbon had been sentenced to seven years in prison by António de Oliveira Salazar's regime merely for raising their wine glasses in a restaurant to toast 'freedom.'

Outraged, Benenson published a front-page article in The Observer on 28 May 1961 titled 'The Forgotten Prisoners,' launching Appeal for Amnesty 1961. He urged citizens to bombard oppressive governments with letters demanding the release of 'prisoners of conscience'—people imprisoned anywhere solely for their peaceful political or religious beliefs. The appeal went viral across thousands of global publications, leading to the permanent establishment of Amnesty International. Today, the organization boasts over ten million supporters worldwide and won the 1977 Nobel Peace Prize.