French police stand guard in front of the entrance of the Paris Grand Mosque as part of the highest level of "Vigipirate" security plan after last week's Islamic militants attacks January 14, 2015. [Photo/Agencies]

Imagine this: It's morning, about 10:30, you are at work sitting around a table with colleagues attending a regular weekly meeting. Maybe it's abuzz with ideas, or perhaps you have tuned out and you are letting your mind wander where it will, pondering the merits of another coffee or what to eat for lunch. Then, the door bursts open, and ... and then, there will never be another coffee or lunch.

In the aftermath of the events in Paris last week, much has been said and written about the limits of free speech, and the underlying message seems to be that those in that room at the Charlie Hebdo office brought their deaths upon themselves through their actions (and by corollary, it seems many believe it won't happen to them, because, of course, they are nice people and they don't say - or draw - such things).

Well, sorry to be the bearer of bad news but it could. Ask Frederic Boisseau who worked as a caretaker at the Charlie Hebdo offices. Ask Ahmed Merabet, Franck Brinsolaro and Clarissa Jean-Philippe who were doing their jobs as police officers, or ask Yoav Hattab, Yohan Cohen, Philippe Braham and Francois-Michel Saada who simply happened to be shopping in the wrong place at the wrong time. Except of course you can't, because they too were killed; even though none of them was a pencil-wielding cartoonist on what was claimed to be a carbon-loaded offensive.

They, and seven other people, were murdered not, as some have tried to suggest, by three irate Frenchmen provoked into a spontaneous killing spree to avenge what they perceived as a wrong, but by a well-armed and well-supported pan-national terrorist cell that had been trained for the sole purpose of killing and instilling fear in the populace. The victims at Charlie Hebdo were high-profile and easy targets, but if it wasn't them it would have been someone else.