Secretary of State John Kerry appeared to justify the terror attacks earlier this year on the satirical French magazine Charlie Hebdo during remarks in Paris Tuesday, saying that there was a “rationale” behind the murders of 11 cartoonists and journalists.

Kerry contrasted that massacre with the recent wave of terror attacks last week, in which 129 people have died. “There’s something different about what happened from Charlie Hebdo, and I think everybody would feel that,” he said while speaking at the American embassy in Paris. “There was a sort of particularized focus and perhaps even a legitimacy in terms of – not a legitimacy, but a rationale that you could attach yourself to somehow and say, okay, they’re really angry because of this and that. This Friday was absolutely indiscriminate. It wasn’t to aggrieve one particular sense of wrong. It was to terrorize people. It was to attack everything that we do stand for.”

The terrorists who committed the Charlie Hebdo attack were reportedly upset by the magazine’s disrespectful portrayals of the Prophet Muhammad.  Following the attack, no top U.S. dignitaries appeared at a major rally in Paris to support free speech and stand up against terror.

[Photo: France24 English / YouTube]