Which humanitarian organisation was founded by Peter Benenson?

Peter Benenson (1921-2005) was the son of a British father and Russian mother, and later in life elected to take the name of the latter, in tribute to his grandfather.

He lost his father when he was only 9, but the family was comfortably off, and at one point he was tutored by the poet W.H. Auden.

During the 2nd World War he worked as a codebreaker at Bletchley Park (famous for Alan Turing's work in cracking the Enigma Code) and after the war, resumed his studies, to qualify as a barrister. His attempts to enter politics were to prove unsuccessful, but he manifested an early concern for Human Rights, joining "JUSTICE", a British-based precursor of Amnesty International.

The founding of AI itself was triggered by an incident in which two Portuguese students were imprisoned simply for drinking a toast to freedom during the notorious Salazar regime in 1961, and that was to see the onset of the organisation's letter-writing campaigns.

Unfortunately, during the later 1960s, he was affected by both ill-health and internal conflict in the organisation, but eventually, there was a reconciliation, and he lived until 2005. He is buried in a small village in Oxfordshire.

To this day AI still campaigns for political prisoners, espousing other humanitarian causes as well, such as opposition to the death penalty and women's reproductive rights.