As a war reporter, I trusted my fixer with my life. Two weeks later, he was kidnapped

Ann Neumann's fixer in Piazza di Porta Capena, where the Axum obelisk stood until its return to Ethiopia in 2009. Photograph: Víctor Sokolowicz/The Guardian

Zleke knew that he was being watched.

One day in the early summer of 2022, two men knocked on his door. They knew his name and carried pistols, though they wore plain clothes. They took his phone and his ID and told him to come with them. He didn’t resist.