According to her testimony, she was held in jail and interrogated before being handed over to mercenaries, apparently from North Ossetia[citation needed], who subjected her to torture, calling her a fascist and forcing her to shout "Sieg Heil", repeatedly shooting pistols next to her ears and threatening to rape her.
She was freed on August 28 after, Mark Franchetti, a reporter for the British newspaper The Sunday Times, and Dmitry Beliakov, a Russian freelance photographer, pleaded with leader Alexander Khodakovsky to release her.
Dovhan became famous after photos of her made by Maurício Lima (published in The New York Times) appeared in social and international media, showing her standing at a busy intersection in downtown Donetsk holding a sign identifying her as a spy and reading: "She kills our children".
A photograph of her mistreatment stirred widespread outrage in Ukraine, prompted a social media effort to identify her and drew the attention of United Nations human rights monitors.
Iryna Dovhan stated that she was never a spy, but she freely admits to being a volunteer who collected donations (food, clothes, medications, and money) from locals and delivered them to Ukrainian soldiers stationed nearby.