- Irene Khan
Irene Khan, the Secretary General of Amnesty International led a high level
- Leonard Peltier
Leonard Peltier is a Native American activist and member of the American Indian Movement. In 1977 he was convicted and sentenced to two consecutive terms of life imprisonment for murdering two FBI Agents who died during a 1975 shoot-out on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation. There has been considerable debate over Peltier’s guilt and the fairness of his trial. Some supporters and organizations, including Amnesty International, consider him to be a political prisoner.
- Chris Hedges
Chris Hedges is a senior fellow at The Nation Institute and a Lecturer in the Council of the Humanities and the Anschutz Distinguished Fellow at Princeton University. Chris spent nearly two decades as a foreign correspondent in Central America, the Middle East, Africa and the Balkans. He is the author of the best selling "War Is a Force That Gives Us Meaning," which was a finalist for The National Book Critics Circle Award for Nonfiction.
- Peter Benenson
Peter James Henry Solomon Benenson (July 31, 1921 - February 25 2005) was an English lawyer and the founder of human rights group Amnesty International (AI).
- Kate Allen
Katherine Allen (Born 25 January 1955) is the Director of Amnesty International UK (AIUK)
- Rebiya Kadeer
Rebiya Kadeer is a prominent Uyghur businesswoman and political activist from the northwest region of Xinjiang in the People's Republic of China. In 1999 she was detained, tried and imprisoned by PRC authorities on charges of "leaking state secrets", having sent newspaper clippings to her husband Sidik Rouzi, an expatriate living in the United States who is active in protesting Chinese policies towards the Uyghurs.
- Idi Amin
Idi Amin Dada (mid-1920s -16 August 2003) was an army officer and president of Uganda. Amin joined the British colonial regiment, the King's African Rifles, in 1946, and advanced to the rank of Major General and Commander of the Ugandan Army. He deposed Milton Obote and took power in a military coup in January 1971. His reign was characterized by human rights abuses, political repression, ethnic persecution, extrajudicial killings and the expulsion of Asians from Uganda.
- Gao Zhisheng
Gao Zhisheng, age 41, is a Chinese army veteran, self taught lawyer and Christian whose law practice has been suspended by the Chinese authorities.
- Mordechai Vanunu
The traitor "' (born Marrakech, Morocco, October 13 1954), also known by his baptismal name John Crossman"', is an Israeli former nuclear technician who revealed details of Israel's nuclear weapons program to the British press in 1986. He was subsequently abducted in Rome by Israeli Mossad agents and smuggled to Israel, where he was tried in secret and convicted of treason.
- Álvaro Uribe
President Uribe reacted to this most recent scandal by purging the military. But he tellingly said that human-rights scandals "make us look bad," as if the problem were simply one of perception. He also called a representative of Human Rights Watch, an organization that helped uncover the violations, an "accomplice of the FARC," Colombia's largest guerrilla group.
- Irshad Manji
Irshad Manji (born 1968) is a Canadian feminist Muslim, author, journalist, and activist. She is a well-known critic of radical Islam and orthodox interpretations of the Qur'an, calling herself a "Muslim refusenik". "The New York Times" has described her as "Osama bin Laden's worst nightmare". Manji advocates a revival of critical thinking, known as "ijtihad" in Islamic tradition.
- Amina Lawal
Amina Lawal Kurami (born 1973) is a Nigerian woman. In March 2002, an Islamic Sharia court (in Funtua, Nigeria in the northern state of Katsina) sentenced her to death by stoning for adultery for conceiving a child out of wedlock. The father of the child was not prosecuted for lack of evidence. Her conviction was overturned and she has since remarried. Baobab for Women's Human Rights, an NGO based in Nigeria took up her case, …
- Martin Ennals
Martin Ennals (1927 - 1991) was a British human rights activist. He served as the third Secretary-General of Amnesty International, between 1968 and 1980. He went on to help found the British human rights organisation ARTICLE 19, followed by International Alert in 1985. The Martin Ennals Award for Human Rights Defenders, created in 1993, …
- Francis Boyle
Dr. Francis Anthony Boyle, is a professor of international law at the University of Illinois College of Law. He is a graduate of the University of Chicago and Harvard Law School. He also received a Ph. D. in political science from Harvard University. Between 1988 and 1992 Boyle was a member of the board of Amnesty International USA.
- William F. Schulz
Dr. William F. Schulz was the Executive Director of Amnesty International USA, the U.S. Section of Amnesty International, from March 1994 to 2006. He is an ordained Unitarian Universalist minister, and previously served as president of the Unitarian Universalist Association from 1985 to 1993. He is married to the Rev. Beth Graham, also a Unitarian Universalist minister, and they live in Massachusetts where Ms.
- Delara Darabi
Delara Darabi born September 21, 1986, is an Iranian girl at the risk of "imminent" execution for a murder which took place when she was 17 years old. She denies committing the crime. Iran is a state party to international treaties that expressly prohibit the use of the death penalty for crimes committed by those under the age of 18. According to Delara the murder of her father's female cousin was committed by the 19 year old boyfriend that she was in love with.
- Lori Berenson
You can read the latest news about the Berenson case on La Esquina del Movimiento , a weblog that I update several times a day. ... When I first put together this page a couple of year ago, I was working off my memory of Lori Berenson and the infamous press conference, which I saw on Peruvian television. I wrote, "In front of TV news cameras, she ranted revolutionary slogans and raised her clenched fist just like her comrades."
- Mikhail Trepashkin
Mikhail Ivanovich Trepashkin, (7 April 1957 -) is a Moscow attorney and former FSB officer who was invited by MP Sergei Kovalev to assist in an independent inquiry of the Russian apartment bombings in September 1999 – the atrocities that provoked the Second Chechen War and skyrocketed Vladimir Putin to presidency.
- Thomas Hammarberg
Thomas Hammarberg is a Swedish diplomat and human rights activist. He is currently the Commissioner for Human Rights at the Council of Europe in Strasbourg. He took up his position on 1 April 2006, succeeding the first Commissioner, Alvaro Gil-Robles. Prior to his appointment, Hammarberg had spent several decades working on the advancement of human rights in Europe and worldwide. He had been Secretary General of the Stockholm-based Olof Palme International Center (2002-05), …
- Patrick Stewart
Patrick Stewart OBE (born July 13, 1940) is an Emmy- and Golden Globe-nominated English film, television and stage actor. He is also Chancellor of the University of Huddersfield. Stewart has had a distinguished career in theatre for nearly fifty years, including performances as various characters in Shakespearean productions. However, he is most famous for his roles as Captain Jean-Luc Picard of the U.S.S Enterprise in "Star Trek: The Next Generation", …
- Lidia Yusupova
Lidia Muhtarovna Yusupova is the Coordinator of the Grozny office of the Moscow-based human rights organization Memorial. She has been described by the BBC News service as "the bravest woman in Europe", and representatives of Amnesty International have similarly declared her "one of the most courageous women in Europe". Both Lidia and her organization have been nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize. Lidia was born in Grozny to Chechen parents, …
- Helen Berhane
Helen Berhane (born c. 1975) is a Christian Gospel singer who was a prisoner in Eritrea. Berhane is a member of the Rema church, one of several minority Evangelical Christian churches not officially recognized by the state of Eritrea and heavily persecuted. She was arrested on 13 May 2004, shortly after she released an album of Christian music, after refusing to sign a document pledging to end all participation in Evangelical activities, …
- Jeremy Corbyn
Jeremy Bernard Corbyn (born 26 May 1949 in Wiltshire) is a British Labour Party politician and Member of Parliament for Islington North. He has been in the House of Commons since he won his seat at the 1983 general election. An old boy of Adams' Grammar School in Shropshire, he is a left-wing member of the Labour Party and is in the Socialist Campaign Group. He has a column in "The Morning Star". A long-time supporter of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, …
- Saad Eddin Ibrahim
Saad Eddin Ibrahim is an Egyptian American sociologist and human rights activist who was imprisoned in 2000 under suspicion of espionage and corruption. His defense team countered that the real motives behind the government's persecution of Ibrahim and his assistants was his blatant criticism of Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak and his government. He received a seven-year sentence, but was later released, some claim, because of external political pressure.
- Ian Martin
Ian Martin is a human rights activist who has been involved in a number of Human Rights organisation. He is currently the Personal Representative of the United Nations Secretary-General in Nepal for Support to the Peace Process. He has been: *Secretary-General of Amnesty International from 1986 to 1992. *Director-General of The UN/OAS International Civilian Mission in Haiti 1993 and 1994-5. *Chief of the UN Human Rights Field Operation in Rwanda 1995-96.
- Allan Nairn
Allan Nairn was born and educated in London, England. His strong Scottish heritage drew him to the highlands of Scotland in 1972, where he founded the Glenmoriston Pottery in an abandoned blacksmiths Smithy on the shores of Loch Ness. Emigrating to America in 1983, Allan settled in Cincinnati, where he became a partner in the Spring Street Pottery with Michael Frasca and Richard Aerni . He later co-founded the Final Design Studio with ceramic artist, Jamie Fine.
- Igor Sutyagin
Igor Sutyagin was a Russian academic analyst of military technology. In 1998 he became the head of the subdivision for Military-Technical and Military-Economic Policy at the U.S. and Canada Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences in Moscow, where he worked before he was arrested for treason. With a degree in physics as well as history, Sutyagin worked on topics relating to U.S. and Russian nuclear weapons development, deployment, and control, …
- Chip Pitts
Chip Pitts is an international attorney, investor/entrepreneur, and law educator who serves as a volunteer leader of a number of civil liberties and human rights organizations. As Board President of the Bill of Rights Defense Committee, he has helped lead the national movement to educate American citizens about recent encroachments on freedom in connection with the U.S.-led "war on terror." As Chairman of Amnesty International USA, …
- Digna Ochoa
Digna Ochoa (full name: Digna Ochoa y Plácido was a human rights lawyer in Mexico. She was born in Misantla, in the state of Veracruz. She went to law school in the state capital, Jalapa, in 1984 and began working part time for the Veracruz Attorney General's Offices in 1986. On August 16, 1988, while politically active with opposition groups, …
- Jennifer Latheef
Jennifer Latheef is a daughter of Mohamed Latheef, a leading Maldivian politician and government critic. She also worked as a Maldivian journalist and photographer for a short period of time. According to an Amnesty International report released in 2003, Jennifer Latheef <blockquote>is an artist and video film producer particularly focusing on the prevalence of sexual abuse in the country. She is known for holding views critical of the government and against censorship, …
- Kevin Spidel
Kevin Spidel is a political consultant currently working with Amnesty International in Washington DC. Previously he has worked with the ACLU and the Hip Hop Caucus. He has also served was the National Deputy Director and co-founder of Progressive Democrats of America. In 2006 he was the Campaign Manager Christine Cegelis for Congress, which garnered major attention from netroots and larger national media.
- Gérard Latortue
Gérard Latortue was the Prime Minister of Haïti from March 12 2004 to June 9 2006. He was an official in the United Nations for many years, and briefly served as foreign minister of Haïti during the short-lived 1988 administration of Leslie Manigat.
- Gérard Jean-Juste
Fr. Gérard Jean-Juste (1947-) is the Roman Catholic rector of Saint Claire's church for the poor in Port-au-Prince, Haïti. He is also a liberation theologian and a supporter of the Fanmi Lavalas political party, the largest in Haïti. In 1978, Father Jean-Juste founded the Haïtian Refugee Center in Miami, Florida. He has been characterized as a beloved figure among South Florida's Haïtian community.
- Ali Salem Tamek
Ali Salem Tamek (b. 1973) is a Moroccan Sahrawi independence activist and trade unionist. While Ali Salem Tamek is from the town of Assa in southern Morocco, he supports Sahrawi self-determination in the Moroccan administered Western Sahara, and has emerged as one of the most outspoken Sahrawi dissidents under Moroccan rule. He was active in Moroccan trade unions and leftist Moroccan spheres. He has been jailed five times for nationalist activities, fired from his job, …
- Martin Lewis
Martin Neil Lewis (born July 24, 1952 in Ashtead, Surrey, England) is a US-based humorist, writer, radio/TV host, producer and marketing strategist.
- Marty Feldman
Martin Alan "Marty" Feldman (8 July 1934 - 2 December 1982) was an English writer, comedian and BAFTA award winning actor, famous for his bulging eyes, which were the result of a thyroid condition known as Graves Disease.
- Martín Almada
Martín Almada is a lawyer, writer and educationalist from Paraguay. He was born in Puerto Sastre, but his family moved to San Lorenzo, near the capital Asunción, when he was six. After he had finished his studies in educational science in 1963, he founded the educational institution "Juan Bautista Alberdi" in San Lorenzo and the "Centro de Animación Sociocultural". He then embarked on a law degree and graduated in 1968.
- Ghaith Abdul-Ahad
Ghaith Abdul-Ahad (born in Baghdad, Iraq, 1975) is an unembedded Iraqi journalist who began working after the U.S. invasion and has written for The Guardian and Washington Post and publish photographs in the New York Times, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, The Guardian, The Times (London), and other media outlets. Ghaith studied architecture at Baghdad University and had never traveled outside Iraq until after the recent war.
- Eric Baker
Eric Baker (22 September 1920-July 1976) was one of the founders of the human rights group Amnesty International and the second general secretary of the organisation. He was also a founder of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament. Baker was a member of the Religious Society of Friends (the Quakers) and served as head of the British Friends Service Council (later renamed Quaker Peace & Social Witness).
- Van Tuong Nguyen
Van Tuong Nguyen (Vietnamese: Nguyễn Tường Vân, baptised Caleb) (17 August 1980 – 2 December 2005) was an Australian from Melbourne, Victoria convicted of drug trafficking in Singapore. A Vietnamese Australian, he was also addressed as Nguyen Tuong Van in the Singaporean media, his name in Vietnamese custom. Drug trafficking carries a mandatory death sentence under Singapore's Misuse of Drugs Act, …