This week's long reads

Support the Guardian Support us   Fund independent journalism Hidden crimes: Mexico’s Mother Courage, Iraq under attack In this week’s newsletter: the mother who said she’d stop at nothing to catch her son’s kidnappers; Iraq caught between Iran and the US Illustration: Harol Bustos Her son went missing. She took justice into her own hands. The results were devastating | Sam Edwards After her son disappeared, Isabel Miranda de Wallace swore she would bring the culprits to justice. She pursued the suspects, who she claimed were members of a criminal gang, and became a national hero. But did she go too far? An oil tanker burning after an Iranian strike at Khor al-Zubair port near Basra, 12 March 2026. Photograph: AP Iraq’s impossible predicament: why the country is trapped between Iran and the US | Ghaith Abdul-Ahad With the outbreak of war between Israel, the US and Iran, Iraq’s balancing act between the antagonists has collapsed, exposing a perilously fragile state. Inside this week’s long read Isabel Miranda de Wallace’s quest for justice was powered by her manipulation of the press and public opinion. We asked Sam Edwards how he saw the cracks in her heroic reputation. This is beyond doubt one of the wildest pieces we have published. When did you realise this story of a mother searching for her son’s kidnappers was actually something much more shocking? I first read about Hugo’s disappearance years ago when I was living in Mexico, and like many people I initially took the story at face value. It fit an archetype that was sadly common: a gruesome crime, police ineptitude or corruption, and a lone parent battling for justice. I only doubted this version much later after the supreme court got involved. From there, I soon realised a few brave people had been questioning the official narrative from the beginning, but for many years they were ignored – or silenced. With such strong political backing for the protagonist of your story, how hard was it to uncover the truth of this case? In some ways it was very difficult. If you start with the headlines, you find many well-respected politicians and journalists still defend Isabel Miranda de Wallace and her record. The national human rights prize has not been revoked, even though she was being investigated for ordering the torture and kidnapping of several people. Who do you believe? This is a confusion many people are struggling with thanks to authoritarians from Donald Trump to Nayib Bukele and their conspiracy theories. But here, once you look at the prosecution’s own case against the accused, it becomes immediately clear that something went horribly wrong in this investigation. You managed to speak to a lot of the people involved, but I know there was even more to the story. Was there anything you would have particularly liked to get in? I interviewed a former member of the Basque separatist group Eta who fled to Mexico and later started a blog about the case. He was the first person, to my knowledge, to question Wallace’s narrative in print, and he paid a heavy price. But he was just one of the many people who suffered after becoming involved. There were countless relatives of the accused, lawyers, activists and journalists who were jailed, harassed or threatened for questioning the official version of events. This week’s audio long reads Saint Levant: the pop star from Gaza caught between passionate fandom and bitter disapproval Pinker’s progress: the celebrity scientist at the centre of the culture wars What training my chaotic dog taught me about power, control – and human beings Listen to the Audio Long Read on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or in the Guardian app   Will Dean Supporters editor Hi there, Our journalism is free to say what it likes. Free from state interference. Free from corporate interference. Free from the editorial interventions of a super-rich owner (because we don’t have one). We think that the journalism we produce is important and that it can make the world a better place. We think it’s something worth paying for. If you’re a regular reader of our journalism and can afford to pay – from just $5 a month – your support will help for all the things necessary for publishing the facts: from reporters, editors and photographers to lawyers, technology and equipment. Support us     From the archive Police using batons to disperse supporters of the Cockroach Janta party as they march toward parliament, New Delhi, 20 July 2026. Photograph: Adnan Abidi/Reuters The mystery of India’s deadly exam scam | December 2015 This week the Indian “cockroach” movement led to widespread protests after test papers were leaked by corrupt officials. It’s not the first education scandal to hit India. Aman Sethi reported on a test-fixing scandal so massive that it led to 2,000 arrests, including top politicians, academics and doctors. Then suspects started turning up dead. A Unitree humanoid robot at the Embodied AI Robot Industry conference in Hangzhou, 11 March 2026. Photograph: CFOTO/Future Publishing/Getty Images Inside China’s robotics revolution | March 2026 This week, Chinese tech startup Moonshot launched a new version of its open source model, as Google struggles with the latest iteration of Gemini. For this piece, Chang Che visited 11 companies in five cities and found China was edging ahead of the US in the quest for AI-powered autonomous robots. What else we’ve been reading I enjoyed Oliver Cussen’s London Review of Books piece on Jean-Paul Marat, who, with his bogus wellness schemes and burning resentments, comes across as a very contemporary character. “Marat’s frustrated ambition might help to explain his later radicalism,” writes Cussen. “Other revolutionaries drew on similar memories of being marginalised and humiliated by the institutions of the High Enlightenment.” David Wolf, editor Taffy Brodesser-Akner is always highly entertaining and I fell on this New York Times piece, as I share her scepticism about cold-water swimming – or I did, until she joined the glowing zealots, conquering the latest unbearable task in our quest for a fix for the problems of daily life. Clare Longrigg, deputy editor Friends have been recommending that I read John Jeremiah Sullivan for about 10 years. This week, I finally listened to them – and to him – by downloading the audiobook of his 2011 book Pulphead. The opening essay, which is an account of his trip to a Christian rock festival, is absolutely brilliant. Yohann Koshy, deputy editor   Our journalism is free to say what it wants… but worth paying for. From breaking news to huge investigative projects; from masterfully told features and long reads to reviews, podcasts, videos, lifestyle advice and much more. It’s an incredible amount of valuable journalism, and it costs a lot of money to produce. However, we keep our website free to read because we believe access to quality news is a global public good: a positive force for the health of democracy around the world. For more than 200 years, we’ve been publishing fearless, independent journalism. Now, with a daily readership in the millions, we can bring vital reporting to people all around the world, including newsletters like this, direct to your inbox. If you’ve been enjoying the Guardian’s independent journalism since signing up, please consider helping to fund our work. 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