Disputed Presidential elections in December of 2007 led to a months-long explosion of violence throughout Kenya's western Rift Valley. Initial political protests aroused latent ethnic, economic and land disputes, shattering the relatively stable east African nation with some of the worst violence since independence in 1963. As rioting and tribal killings intensified in the provincial capital of Nakuru, looters were caught and beaten by private security guards in the weeks after the elections.

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