The former Afghan warlord known as “the butcher of Kabul” called for peace during a speech before his supporters at Kabul’s Ghazi Stadium on Friday, May 5, while hundreds of protesters staged a demonstration nearby.

Gulbuddin Hekmatyar returned to Kabul to a presidential reception on Thursday, following a peace deal he signed with the government last fall. Hekmatyar’s group, Hezb-e Islami, was responsible for some of the deadliest violence in the capital during Afghanistan’s civil war in the 1990s.

On Friday, Hekmatyar said the country now needs peace and called on all insurgents, including the Taliban, to put down their arms.