In an interview with NewsMax on Wednesday, Paul condemned the attack on a magazine that left 12 people dead and described it as “obscene” and “blowback.”

He explained that the French government’s policies to intervene in the affairs of other countries caused these kinds of attacks.

“France has been a target for many, many years, because they’ve been involved in foreign affairs in Libya, and they really prodded us along in — recently in Libya, but they’ve been involved in Algeria, so they’ve had attacks like this, you know, not infrequently. So, it does involve, you know, their foreign policy as well,” he said.

“It’s that overall policy which invites retaliation, and they see us as intruders. But it’s a little bit more complex, you know, when they hit us, either here at home, and hit civilians, and what’s happening in France. But I don’t think you can divorce these instances from the overall foreign policy,” the former presidential candidate added.

Wednesday’s shooting killed 12 people and wounded 11 others after gunmen opened fire at the offices of Charlie Hebdo.