Babic's death "proves that his testimony was made under duress and therefore it cannot be used as evidence in proceedings before the Hague tribunal," the Belgrade-based Association of Serbs from Croatia said in a statement.
The director of the Veritas Documentation and Information Centre, Savo Strbac, told Radio B92 that what Babic had told the Hague tribunal "is not completely true" and that his statements were "in many ways characterised by his personal conflicts with people he testified against."
The head of the Human Rights Lawyers Committee, Biljana Kovacevic Vuco, said that Babic's suicide would adversely affect proceedings taking place before the Hague tribunal for war crimes committed in Croatia, in which Babic had appeared as a witness.
"His suicide is a major problem. Milan Babic is one of the key witnesses of what happened in Croatia. He was a repentant witness who played an important role in shedding light on those events," Kovacevic Vuco told Beta news agency.