The participants were all dressed in white for the “marche blanche,” which served both as a tribute to the woman’s memory and a demonstration against a decision to allow the man who allegedly murdered her to be released from prison, according to media reports.

They walked to the court which agreed to release convicted kidnapper, rapist and murderer Claude Dubois so he could serve the last part of a 20-year jail term under house arrest.

Dubois was rearrested by police from the cantons of Fribourg and Vaud last Tuesday after reports that he had kidnapped Marie the day before near a golf course.

Police later found Marie dead in a wood near Châttonnaye in the canton of Fribourg early Wednesday morning after Dubois gave them information about her whereabouts.

The march followed a similar demonstration in Payerne in the canton of Vaud, where Marie lived and where she was abducted.

“Marie did not deserve to die,” the organizer of the demonstration, a woman who is a mother was quoted as saying by Le Matin online.

“She would still be living if the justice system had not freed (her assassin),” she said.

The marchers want to see a justice system that treats criminals with greater severity.

Dubois was sentenced to 20 years in prison in 2000 after being convicted of abducting, raping and killing his former girlfriend two years earlier.

He was released from jail last year and allowed to remain under monitoring through an electronic ankle bracelet.

Police said Dubois removed the bracelet after abducting Marie.

The Vaud cantonal court on Friday appointed the former attorney general of Solothurn, Félix Bänziger, to look into the alleged lapses in the judicial system in this latest case.

Bänziger is set to report back to the court before July.