Short answers, pulled from the story.
Amnesty International was founded in London in July 1961 by English barrister Peter Benenson. Benenson had previously been a founding member of the UK law reform organization JUSTICE. The organization was officially named Amnesty International on the 30th of September 1962.
Amnesty International was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1977 for "having contributed to securing the ground for freedom, for justice, and thereby also for peace in the world". The following year, in 1978, it also received the United Nations Prize in the Field of Human Rights.
Amnesty International defines a prisoner of conscience as a person imprisoned or prevented from expressing an opinion by means of violence. The organization coined the term in its founding 1961 article and uses it as the core of its campaigning work. It does not apply the designation to anyone convicted, after a fair trial, of activities involving violence.
In 1990, Amnesty International confirmed and helped spread the testimony of a Kuwaiti woman known as Nayirah, who claimed Iraqi soldiers had stolen hospital incubators and left infants to die. After the Gulf War, the testimony was found to be entirely fabricated. Nayirah was the daughter of a Kuwaiti diplomat with ties to the pro-war organization that arranged the congressional hearing.
Amnesty International says it has more than ten million members and supporters around the world. By 2019 the organization had 63 national sections. Membership grew from 15,000 in 1969 to 200,000 by 1979, and exceeded seven million in over 150 countries by the 1990s.
Amnesty International's logo combines a candle and barbed wire, drawn from the proverb "Better to light a candle than curse the darkness". It was designed by Diana Redhouse in 1963 as the organization's first Christmas card. The candle symbolizes hope for prisoners, and the barbed wire represents unjust imprisonment.