A Syrian refugee arrested in Germany on Monday (October 10th) after being tied up by three compatriots was plotting to bomb a Berlin airport in the name of the "Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant" (ISIL), AFP reported.

"We have received information from the secret services that he initially wanted to target trains in Germany before finally deciding on one of Berlin's airports," head of domestic intelligence Hans-Georg Maassen told German public TV channel ARD.

The decision to arrest the suspect was taken Friday after he bought hot-melt glue.

"We thought this was the last chemical product he needed to make a bomb," said Maassen.

Jaber Albakr, 22, had narrowly slipped through the police net Saturday when commandos raided his apartment and found 1.5 kilogrammes of TATP, the homemade explosive used by the perpetrators of the Paris and Brussels attacks.

After a two-day manhunt, police finally got their man with the help of three of Albakr's fellow Syrians in the eastern city of Leipzig.

The three Syrians said they had been approached by Albakr at a railway station and asked for shelter. They took him home, only to find out in a police alert that he was the bomb plot suspect on the run.

Albakr tried to bribe the men, who refused his plea and tied him up with an electrical cord until the police got there.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel on Monday expressed her gratitude, saying the Syrians had "made a decisive contribution" to the arrest.

The deputy chief of the Federation of Police Officers, Sebastian Fiedler, also called it a "very positive sign that shows that one must not place all refugees under suspicion".