Port-au-Prince, March 21 (RHC-teleSUR) -- Former Haitian President Jean-Bertrand Aristide survived an apparent assassination attempt Monday when gunmen opened fire on his motorcade, injuring two passersby.

Aristide was leaving a courthouse in Port-au-Prince, providing testimony for a money laundering case against Jean Anthony Nazaire, former commissary of the Haitian national police, when bullets flew toward his car.

Attorneys of the former Haitian president told NBC News that "at least two people standing in front of the car were hit, but fortunately no one was killed."

Protests in support of the still-popular former president broke out soon after. Aristide became Haiti's first democratically elected president. A proponent of liberation theology, he played an instrumental role in expelling dictator Jean-Claude Duvalier in 1986, whose family ruled the country for almost 30 years.

Elected twice as president, Aristide was forced to flee the country both times, the first time in 1991 to Venezuela, and then later to the United States after a military coup against him. He was returned to office in 1994 with the help of pressure from the U.S. Then, in 2004, the administration of former U.S. President George W. Bush backed a coup against him and he was flown out of the country – a move Aristide described as a kidnapping, when he had to spend his first months in exile in Jamaica before relocating to South Africa.

Aristide returned to Haiti in 2011 – following a massive earthquake the year before which devastated the country – so that he could be a part of the rebuilding process.