Two British Muslims cleared of helping the 7 July bombers choose their targets were today sentenced to seven years in jail each for planning to attend a terrorist training camp.

Waheed Ali, 25, and Mohammed Shakil, 32, were yesterday found not guilty at Kingston crown court of conspiring to cause explosions with the four men who carried out the attacks that killed 52 people in 2005.

The pair, who were arrested as they were about to board a flight to Pakistan in 2007, were found guilty of conspiracy to attend a terrorist training camp. They have already spent two years in jail on remand.

The judge, Mr Justice Gross, told Ali and Shakil they had committed an offence "at a serious level".

"Your intention, but for your apprehension, was to attend a real camp and to use real guns in training at that camp," he said. "This was not play acting and you were determined players, not naive dupes."

He told the pair they had a "very real prospect of reoffending".

Gross said the most important factor in his sentencing decision was to deter others attending such camps.

The trial heard that an estimated 1,000 young Muslims from the UK visited training camps in Pakistan between 1998 and 2003.

The judge said: "It must be made entirely clear, if necessary through sentences of an appropriate length, that such conduct is unacceptable."

Referring to the acquittal of Ali, Shakil and co-accused Sadeer Saleem, 28, on the separate charge of conspiracy to cause explosions, Mr Justice Gross said the jury's decision must be respected.

"Defendants must receive a fair trial and must not be convicted unless the jury has been made sure of their guilt," he said. "That is a strength of our system. By its verdict, the jury in this case indicated the crown had not made it sure the defendants were party to the conspiracy to cause explosions that ended in the July 7 bombings. That verdict is to be respected."

The head of Scotland Yard's counter-terrorism command, Deputy Assistant Commissioner John McDowall, said Ali and Shakil shared the same extremist beliefs as the London bombers, with whom they had grown up in Beeston, Leeds.

They were acquitted of carrying out a reconnaissance mission in London with two of the men, Hasib Hussain and Jermaine Lindsay, seven months before the explosions. They insisted the trip had been an innocent social outing for sightseeing and visiting family, and had nothing to do with the attacks. During their two-day trip to London in 2004 the three visited the London Eye, the Natural History Museum and the London Aquarium.

The men were retried after an earlier jury failed to reach verdicts. After eight days of deliberations the jury cleared them unanimously, along with Saleem.

The total cost of the two trials is likely to exceed £5m and the families of the 7 July victims say the verdicts mean no one is likely to ever be brought to justice for the attacks. They are demanding a full independent inquiry into the atrocity.

Bereaved families and survivors have called on the government to publish a second Intelligence and Security Committee (ISC) report into the bombings without delay.