According to the court press release: 

"The applicants, Zita Bistieva, a Russian national born in 1976, and her three minor children, born in 2006, 2008, and 2013 respectively, live in Herne (Germany). The case concerned the family’s detention in a centre for aliens in Poland. Ms Bistieva arrived in Poland with her husband and her first two children in 2012. The husband applied for asylum for himself and the family but the authorities rejected the application in March 2013 and ordered their expulsion. The family fled to Germany, where Ms Bistieva had a third child. The German authorities sent her and the children back to Poland in January 2014 and they were placed in the Kętrzyn aliens centre where Ms Bistieva’s husband apparently joined them in February 2014. They were released from the centre in June 2014, eventually moving back to Germany. Ms Bistieva and her children complained about their detention in the centre under, in particular, Article 8 (right to respect for private and family life) of the European Convention on Human Rights."

The court found that the Polish authorities had not fulfilled their obligation to consider the family’s detention as a measure of last resort, and had not considered alternative measures. The detention of minors shall call for greater speed and diligence on the part of the authorities. Even in the light of the risk that the family might abscond, the authorities failed to provide sufficient reasons to justify the detention for nearly 6 months.