Saman Ahmed Hamad, a Sunni Muslim from Iraq, is an asylum seeker. He fled Iraq on 10 August 2016 because of death threats received because of his religious beliefs. He entered Hungary on 23 August 2017 through a transit zone, where he applied for asylum and remained in the transit zone. His application was repeatedly rejected and on appeal the court would order a new procedure. On 19 March 2018, the applicant challenged his placement in detention in the transit zone. His challenged was dismissed and in June 2018 the court stayed the procedure to lodge a request for a preliminary ruling before the CJEU.

The UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention found that detaining an asylum applicant in a transit zone at land borders, solely because he had submitted an application for international protection, constituted an arbitrary deprivation of liberty, in violation of several provisions of the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights and Article 9 (right to liberty) of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR).