Georgia’s prisons minister resigned Wednesday over videos showing the alleged beating and rape of convicts that caused outrage ahead of bitterly-contested elections in the ex-Soviet state. Some of the graphic video footage, aired late Tuesday by opposition television station TV9, showed a weeping half-naked male prisoner at a jail in Tbilisi begging for mercy before apparently being raped with a stick. “What happened in penitentiary number 8 is horrific and I have submitted my resignation to the prime minister,” minister Khatuna Kalmakhelidze said in televised comments. Another video released by the interior ministry showed prison guards brutally kicking an inmate. A Georgian government statement said that 15 alleged perpetrators had already been arrested and claimed that the videos were staged by paid provocateurs paid to discredit the authorities ahead of the polls. “It should be noted that these were premeditated crimes and there is evidence that those who arranged, conducted and recorded these abuses were paid to do so,” the government statement said.