Abdul-Latif Ali al-Mayah (1949 or 1950 – January 19, 2004) was a humanities professor born in Basra, who became chairman of the Arab World Research and Studies Centre at Mustansiriya University and head of the Baghdad Centre for Human Rights. He was an outspoken critic of the Iraq Interim Governing Council, which was the provisional government of Iraq from 2003 to 2004, established by the US-led multinational coalition occupying Iraq, following the 2003 Invasion of Iraq. He was assassinated on January 19, 2004. Academic career Abdul-Latif Ali al-Mayah taught the politics of the Arab region, and became the head of the Arab World Research and Studies Centre of Mustansiriya University. Students and colleagues said that he was an enthusiastic teacher and that he used his own money to buy computers for his classroom. Political positions Abdul-Latif Ali al-Mayah was for some time a low-level member of the Ba'ath Party. He voluntarily quit the party in 1991 due to dissatisfaction with it. He believed in the original Ba'ath ideal of Arab unity, but not in the way the Ba'ath Party was implementing this. While Saddam Hussein remained in power as president of Iraq, Al-Mayah called for elections. Because of this, he was imprisoned. He was released from prison, partly because one of his former students was one of the interrogators. Following the 2003 US invasion of Iraq, al-Mayah was against both the occupation and the previous dictatorship. According to Talal Nathan al-Zuhary, director of the Mustansiriya University library, al-Mayah believed that "one day he would be bumped off by the Mossad or the CIA" and that "More recently [following the invasion], he was more worried about the looters who came after the regime fell and stole so much." Al-Mayah became well known as a human rights and pro-democracy campaigner. On the evening of January 18, 2004, on the television channel al-Jazeera, he had criticised what he called the corruption of the Iraqi Governing Council (IGC), appointed by the US authorities, and demanded universal elections as soon as possible, as had earlier done during the presidency of Saddam Hussein. He is quoted as saying, "I can endure any Iraqi government, but the feeling of being under occupation is terrible for me." Since US authorities were planning a caucus system for choosing a new government rather than representative democracy by all Iraqi adult citizens, al-Mayah's public declaration directly opposed United States policy in