The changes of the past year are etched on Zahira Obaya's pretty face. She was 21 years old when she boarded a commuter train on her way to work last March 11. When the bombs exploded a few minutes later, her face was almost completely destroyed, and today, a piece of gauze covers her missing eye. "There is no justification for what they did," she says. "But I think I can understand how the war, the killings, would create that kind of hatred."Ms. Obaya is living proof that the Spanish response to the worst terrorist attack in the country's history is nothing if not complicated. As experts and world leaders gather here this week to hammer out an agreement on how best to fight terror democratically, they do so in a city that has reached little consensus on what last year's attacks meant.
Seventy five people have been implicated in the attacks; 28 of them are in Spanish custody. The investigations will probably continue for several more months, but judicial reports suggest that a loose network of individuals, some with connections to the Moroccan Islamic Combat Group, used criminal contacts and drug money to obtain the explosives that killed 191 people and injured more than 1,500 others at a Madrid train station.