The British lawyer who founded the human rights organisation Amnesty International with his stated goal ‘‘to condemn persecution regardless of where it occurs, or what are the ideas suppressed’’, has died. He was 83.Benenson died on Friday night at John Radcliffe Hospital in Oxford, England, of pneumonia, Amnesty International USA spokesperson Wende Gozan said Saturday. Benenson had been in ill health for several years.With a social conscience developed in early childhood, Benenson laid the foundation for Amnesty International in 1961 after becoming incensed over an article he read about the imprisonment of two students in Portugal. The youths were sentenced to seven years after their arrest at a Lisbon cafe for drinking a toast to liberation from the then-existing dictatorship of Antonio Salazar.Benenson set off for the Portuguese embassy in London to protest, but suddenly decided to get off the subway at Trafalgar Square and went inside the church of St. Martin’s-in-the-Fields to think. Envisioning a massive letter-writing campaign to officials of Portugal and other repressive authorities at the time, Benenson wrote the article, ‘‘The Forgotten Prisoners’’, published by London’s Observer newspaper on May 28, 1961. The article was the opening salvo in what was seen as a year-long appeal for Amnesty urging supporters to write letters urging the release of ‘‘prisoners of conscience’’, a term he coined that would become an international rallying cry.The one-year effort became permanent, initially attracting thousands of international letter-writers eager to enforce the ignored 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Benenson and his followers not only wrote letters, but travelled to countries to investigate cases and make publicised direct appeals for the release of prisoners.Initially, Benenson personally provided most of the organisation’s funding. In observance of the organisation’s 25th anniversary, outside the church of St. Martin’s in the Fields in London where he first conceived of the international human rights campaign, Benenson lit a symbolic candle. The logo for Amnesty International is a candle surrounded by barbed wire. —LAT-WP
