BOSTON -- Two imams from Boston-area mosques were charged Tuesday with being involved in a scheme that secured religious worker visas for immigrants who instead got secular jobs.

NewsCenter 5's David Boeri reported that Hafiz Abdul Hannan and Muhammed Masood were arrested last week. They appeared in court and were released on $7,500 bond.

Masood is the leader of the Islamic Center in Sharon and Hannan leads the Islamic Society of Greater Lowell.

"If this was clerics who were anything other than Muslims, would they have had to face this?" Muslim American Society spokesman Mahdi Bray said.

Outside a federal immigration hearing, clerics of different faiths, including a rabbi, praised Masood and said that the charges were unjust.

"It's important for all people of faith, whatever the faith may be, to stand together at moments such as this," Rabbi Barry Star, of the Temple Israel, said.

Lawyers dismissed the evidence and the alleged infractions as technical and administrative.

"Someone who is a leader in the community. Someone who is a prison Chaplin, someone who is a leader in the interfaith community and has no danger to the community and is an asset to our community, and to haul him away was just outrageous," Hannan's attorney Jerry Friedman said.