Universities UK (UUK) and the British government are promoting partnerships between UK and Egyptian higher education institutions (HEIs). A series of memoranda of understanding signed over the past few years have laid the groundwork for UK HEIs to establish international branch campuses and other programmes. Yet the government officials and university managers seem to have forgotten that only two years ago, Giulio Regeni, a Cambridge PhD student, was abducted, tortured and murdered while undertaking research in Cairo. Giulio was one of many students and academics who have been arrested, tortured, jailed and killed in recent years in Egypt, in the context of a much wider campaign of repression targeting the political opposition, trade unions, civil society, independent media, and the legal profession.