The Bradford owners of a restaurant at the centre of an outbreak of a rare food poisoning bug have received suspended jail sentences and been banned for life from working with food again.

Mohammed Ayub and Abdul Ghafoor, the two men behind the now-defunct Saffron restaurant in Ilkley, were sentenced at Bradford Crown Court yesterday.

They had pleaded guilty to 12 breaches of food-hygiene laws and six counts of selling food unfit for human consumption at an earlier hearing before magistrates.

They also admitted failing to register the business with Bradford Council and obst-ructing the authority’s inq-uiry into the 2007 outbreak.

The court heard how the pair – Ghafoor lent the £15,000 to allow Ayub take over the lease – presided over a business “riddled” with Giardia Lamblia as well as E. coli and that they had a “basic disregard for the proper standards of food hygiene”.

There were 64 confirmed cases in Ilkley linked to the restaurant’s customers, 25 probable cases and a further 275 possible cases, according to environmental health bosses.

The rare parasitic infection had passed into food and water served at the restaurant through poor hygiene practices, and a poorly maintained water filtration system in particular.

Recorder Carl Gumsley described the hygiene practices at Saffron as “an accident waiting to happen” because of the “criminally inept way the restaurant was run”.

He told the pair: “It is clear that this restaurant, Saffron, was the source of the food poisoning suffered by a large number of people who had dined, and more specifically, drank water at the premises.

“Your restaurant is responsible through criminal ineptitude and sheer laziness for causing a large amount of misery to a large number of people who have suffered very unpleasant symptoms for up to two months.

“There were lies after lies and economies of truth. This clearly obstructed the authorities as they started the long and difficult task of tracing, isolating and eradicating the outbreak.”

Ayub, 35, of Westlands Grove, Allerton, received a nine-month sentence suspended for two years and must pay a £250 contribution to costs.

Ghafoor, 34, of Fagley Road, Fagley, described as the sleeping partner in the business, received a six-month sentence also suspended for two years and must pay £500 costs. Both were ordered to carry out 250 hours’ unpaid work and were handed down supervision orders for 12 months.