Al-Bakr had come to Germany from Syria in February 2015, and was granted refugee status five months later, The New York Times reported. In the last several months, he had come under surveillance by German authorities, and police raided his home Friday after agents received information al-Bakr planned to bomb a public place in Germany, possibly an airport in Berlin. They found the same explosive-making materials used by Islamic State terrorists to kill hundreds in the Brussels and Paris bombings last year. Al-Bakr escaped the raid, and police continued their search.

Early Monday morning, about an hour north of Chemnitz, in Leipzig, al-Bakr met a fellow Syrian at the train station. Al-Bakr told the man he was in need of immediate housing, according to Deutsche Welle, and, wanting to help a fellow Syrian, the man offered him a place to stay. The man and two other Syrians recognized that day that their new roommate was the suspect sought by German police, and they tied him up.

According to Deutsche Welle, one of the Syrians told a TV station that al-Bakr tried to bribe them, but the men refused. The man, identified only as Mohammed A., said he told al-Bakr: “You can give us as much as you like, but we are not letting you go. … I was so angry at him. I won't accept such a thing—especially here in Germany, the country that opened its door to us.”

The three Syrians called police, but officers couldn’t understand them, Deutsche Welle reported. So they took a cellphone picture of al-Bakr and went to the police station. Police arrested al-Bakr early Monday, and also took into custody a second suspect who is believed to have rented al-Bakr his apartment in Chemnitz.

But the Good Samaritan act is unlikely to quell the growing chorus opposed to Merkel’s refugee policy. The policy was initially a point of pride among Germans in early 2015, during a time when other European countries had closed off their borders or pushed Syrian refugees along train lines and into other countries. Over the last year, however, several terrorist attacks led to shifts in public opinion and propelled a nationalist movement—in Germany and other European nations—that seeks to end refugee resettlement. The policy is considered Merkel’s most challenging issue in next year’s general election, which could give her a fourth term—or signal the rise of Alternative für Deutschland, Germany’s right-wing populist party.