The solemn march came one day after the girl, who has been identified by French media as Chloë, was abducted in front of her mother at a park in Calais.
Chloë was playing with a friend when she approached a man who had stopped his car nearby to drink and squirted him with her water gun, according to prosecutor Jean-Pierre Valensi. The man then grabbed the girl and forced her into his car, before driving her to a nearby wood where he raped and strangled her.
Police were alerted to the kidnapping at around 3:30pm and quickly deployed search teams. Chloë’s naked body was found in the wood less than two hours later.
Shortly afterwards, police detained a 38-year-old Polish man in connection with the crime. The suspect, who was intoxicated, “immediately admitted to his involvement in the child’s death”, Valensi said.
Criminal past
The suspect in Chloë’s brutal murder had a long criminal past and had already served time in a French prison for robbery and extortion. It also emerged on Thursday that he violently threatened another young girl in 2009.
David Selingue, a hairdresser in Calais, said his wife found the suspect in the room of his nine-year-old daughter in June of that year, emerging from under a piece of furniture with a knife.
"He was pointing the blade towards her (his daughter) to threaten her," Selingue told AFP, adding he then escaped through a window.
The suspect was handed over to Polish authorities in March last year after a Europe-wide arrest warrant was issued in his name. He apparently returned to France on Wednesday morning and was planning to travel to Britain where his sister lived, Valensi said.
Calais is the main staging post for migrants trying to reach Britain from continental Europe without official documents.
Calais Mayor Natacha Bouchart has said that France's interior minister assured her he would question the authorities in Poland over the man's actions since he was handed over.
Meanwhile, Prime Minister Manuel Valls has called for full light to be shed on the suspect's past, saying the family and community were "deeply shocked" by the murder.
"It is up to the legal system now to carry out the investigation and what we owe to the family is the whole truth," he said.
The city of Calais was plunged into mourning by the killing of the girl described as "cheerful and full of life".
Chloe's parents, sister and two brothers led the march in her memory. Flags were also flown at half mast across the city.
(FRANCE 24 with AFP)
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