Port-au-Prince, Haiti ? A Haitian political activist freed from jail by armed supporters on Friday withdrew his call to oust President Jean-Bertrand Aristide pending a judicial review of his case.

“We have called a halt to the demonstrations,” 38-year-old Amiot Metayer told reporters from his base in Raboteau, a shantytown in Gonaives about 60 miles north of Port-au-Prince, the capital.

After weeks of agitating for his release, Metayer’s supporters rammed a stolen tractor through Gonaives prison wall on Aug. 2, freeing 159 inmates and their leader. The gunmen burned down the city hall and courthouse, and drove police out of the town. Only 10 inmates have been recaptured. Days of street violence followed the jailbreak with militants calling for Aristide’s ouster.

On Friday, Metayer said he was waiting for the government to respond to his lawyers’ requests that all charges against him be dropped.

But government spokesman Mario Dupuy responded that it was not the government’s decision but “up to the judicial system to decide” whether Metayer should be rearrested.

As a sign of good faith, Metayer said he ordered his supporters to clear debris and makeshift barricades from the streets.

“Thus, we hope peace will become a reality for everyone and culminate in an authentic state of law,” he said.

But one of his supporters, Mitto Dolcine, said Metayer’s self-styled Cannibal Army gang “will not withdraw our demands until Metayer is cleared of the charges.”

Metayer was a former supporter of Aristide who turned against the president after his arrest July 2.

Metayer was accused of ordering the torching of opposition homes in Gonaives, a city of 200,000, after a Dec. 17 attack on the National Palace in Port-au-Prince that Aristide said was an attempt to assassinate him and oust his government.

Opposition leaders said the attack was staged as a pretext to clamp down on dissent.

The latest violence and apparent inability of police to react is another indication of the growing chaos enveloping the hemisphere’s poorest nation, mired in a two-year political impasse over fraudulent elections that has blocked international aid.

The international community and human rights groups have demanded the government rearrest Metayer.

“Armed gangs supporting political activists or locally elected officials have been allowed to consolidate their presence and now constitute a serious challenge to the rule of law in the country,” Amnesty International said.