A Haitian rebel leader who once led a paramilitary group accused of killing and torturing thousands of people has been released from prison, his lawyer said Friday. Louis-Jodel Chamblain, a leader of the armed uprising that ousted President Jean-Bertrand Aristide in February 2004, was released Thursday from the National Penitentiary, attorney Stanley Gaston said. Chamblain was jailed in April 2004 on two counts of murder. He was acquitted but kept in prison while authorities investigated allegations that he masterminded a 1993 fire that devastated part of Cite Soleil, a vast waterfront shantytown outside of Port-au-Prince, Gaston said. An appeals court ordered him released on July 26, ruling there were insufficient grounds to hold him for the arson, Gaston said. The lawyer said it took three weeks to push authorities into carrying out the order for Chamblain's release.A former army sergeant, Chamblain was one of two leaders of the Front for the Advancement and Progress of the Haitian People, a paramilitary group suspected of killing and torturing thousands of people during the 1992-1994 military regime that seized power in the coup that first ousted Aristide. A U.S. military intervention restored Aristide to power in 1994, and Chamblain went to the Dominican Republic. He returned to Haiti in February 2004 to help lead the revolt that ousted Aristide a second time. Jean-Claude Bajeux, the director of the local Ecumenical Center for Human Rights, condemned Chamblain's release. "Chamblain is a hired gun. Killers like him are always ready to serve dictatorial regimes," Bajeux said. "What makes us indignant is not Chamblain's release but the shortcomings of the judicial system and the incompetence of its investigations."