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Obituary
Founder of human rights group dies
Associated Press
Published February 27, 2005
LONDON - Peter Benenson, who founded Amnesty International more than four decades ago, died Friday (Feb. 25, 2005), the human rights organization said Saturday. He was 83.
Benenson had been ill for several years. He died at John Radcliffe Hospital in Oxford, England, from pneumonia, Amnesty spokesman Brendan Paddy said.
In 1961, at the age of 40, Benenson set up Amnesty after reading an article about the arrest and imprisonment of two students in a cafe in Lisbon, Portugal, who had drunk a toast to liberty.
He initially envisioned Amnesty as a one-year campaign, but it went on to become the world's largest independent human rights organization. Currently, Amnesty, which is based in London, has more than 1.8-million members and supporters worldwide.
[Last modified February 27, 2005, 00:14:06]
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