Tom Bernstein

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Tom Bernstein a co-founder of the Chelsea Piers Sports and Entertainment Complex in Chelsea, Manhattan is also a financier of Hollywood movies and an activist lawyer in the human rights movement. He is a founding member of Human Rights First--as the Lawyers Committee for Human Rights--in 1982, and has served as its president since 1993.

Mr. Bernstein's organization, joined by the American Civil Liberties Union, filed a lawsuit in 2005 against Donald Rumsfeld on behalf of detainees in Iraq and Afghanistan. Human Rights First that filed an amicus curiae brief on behalf of alleged "dirty bomber" Jose Padilla, an American citizen who the Justice Department believes is an al Qaeda recruit. Human Rights First also called for a 9/11-style commission to investigate the alleged torture of detainees, complete with budget authority, subpoena power and the ability to demand that witnesses testify under oath.

Mr. Bernstein also was a promoter and director of the International Freedom Center at the WTC. Governor George Pataki barred that project from the WTC site and the IFC has been abandoned.

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