Excerpt:
Nearly one year after being nabbed in a prostitution sting during the holy month of Ramadan, a jailhouse imam is still proclaiming his innocence in a case set to go to trial in September.
Charles Bilal, an imam at Rikers Island and in Jamaica, allegedly paid an undercover cop, posing as a hooker, $25 for sex in August 2011. He was arrested at around 11 p.m. at a Howard Johnson Inn on Rockaway Boulevard near 137th Avenue in South Jamaica.
Bilal's lawyer, Elliot Leibowitz, said the religious leader went to the location to meet a friend and did not have any interaction with the undercover cop whom the NYPD said he propositioned.