Dubai: A man was arrested on Saturday for beating his 13-year-old son to death, Dubai Police said.

The man was held after he took his son to Rashid Hospital, claiming that the boy had hit his head and lost consciousness while swimming in the building’s pool.

The boy was already dead when the father brought him to the hospital.

When CID officers reached the hospital they noticed multiple bruises on the boy’s body, and after further inspection they found there were old and new signs of physical abuse.

Major General Khamis Mattar Al Mazeina, Dubai Police Chief, said investigations are still ongoing and that they are testing the man’s DNA and contacting the man’s family in Africa to ensure the boy is the man’s son because the marks left by the old and new beating on the child’s body were too severe to be disciplinary.

When police inspected the man’s house they found that the father had typed something along the lines of how to treat severe beating to the abdomen in a search engine.

Forensics confirmed that the boy died due to internal injuries and bleeding that created blood clots because it was not treated, which was a result of repetitive beatings to his vital organs.

The man and the boy lived in shared accommodation.

Police questioned the man’s flatmates and neighbours, who said that they saw the man beat his son violently on multiple occasions and that they tried to tell him to stop, but he would not listen.

Maj Gen Al Mazeina said the neighbours should have reported those incidents to the police.

Major General Khalil Ebrahim Al Mansouri, Assistant to the Dubai Police chief for Criminal Investigation Affairs, said during investigations the father said the boy was born out of wedlock years ago when he was in his home country, and that he left him with his family when he came to the UAE for work two years ago.

The man said he got his son to live with him ten months ago and enrolled him in school.

When police told him what his neighbours said about him beating his child, he claimed that he was disciplining him to study better and listen to him, and confessed that he beat him with a shoe and stick on his head and abdomen on the day of the incident, but that he did not intend to kill him.

People can report suspicious cases or cases of abuse to 901 or 800CID (800243).