Bosnian Muslim officials and representatives of nongovernmental organisations voiced their deep disappointment with the fact that the former close associate of Radovan Karadzic had been freed of charges of genocide.
The chairman of Bosnia's collective state presidency, Sulejman Tihic, said he regretted that Krajisnik had not been sentenced also for the gravest type of war crime, but hoped that this would change in the appeals proceedings.
Tihic added that justice had been served to some extent because the verdict showed that Bosnian Serb authorities and institutions had participated in a criminal enterprise and the killing and persecution of non-Serb populations.
"The verdict shows clearly that the Bosnian Serb entity was founded on a criminal enterprise," Tihic said.
Bosnian Prime Minister Adnan Terzic said that it was not logical for the trial chamber in the case not to have accepted evidence of Krajisnik's participation in genocide that was presented in a number of other cases.
The head of the Institute for Missing Persons, Amor Masovic, said he was shocked by the verdict.
"It is obvious that genocide was committed and verdicts have been passed that confirm it... Mass graves, cemeteries and places of suffering bear witness to the fact that genocide did happen and that Krajisnik was one of those who masterminded it," Masovic was quoted by ONASA agency.
Murat Tahirovic, who leads the association of former Bosnian Muslim prison camp inmates, said that responsibility for genocide in Krajisnik's case was "intentionally avoided".
"This is proof that the Hague tribunal was not up to its task," Tahirovic said, adding that the tribunal served the international community as a means to downplay war crimes committed in Bosnia.
Bosnian Serb officials and representatives of the most influential parties in the Serb entity were satisfied with the fact that Krajisnik was freed from the genocide charge, but not with the duration of the sentence.
The vice-president of the Serb Democratic Party, Mladen Bosic, said in Banja Luka that it was a great victory for Krajisnik that the charge of genocide had been dropped.
He added that the duration of the sentence was shocking and legally unfounded because Krajisnik personally was not responsible for any crime.
A senior official of the Party of Independent Social Democrats, Igor Radojicic, said that the verdict was yet another proof that the Hague tribunal was not impartial.
"Senior Serb officials always receive harsh sentences, Croat officials slightly less harsh, but there are almost no Bosniak officials and leaders in The Hague," Radojicic told reporters.
He also claimed that delivering the sentence in the case three days before general elections in Bosnia was an act of provocation and grist to the mill of Bosniak nationalists.