News- Middle East: At least two current and three former Microsoft employees, along with other tech workers, have been arrested at the company’s headquarters following a sit-in protest at the president’s office calling for Microsoft to end its ties with the Israeli regime.

Current and former Microsoft workers re-established the “Liberated Zone” by holding a sit-in inside Microsoft executives’ Building 34, renaming it to “Mai Ubeid Building” in honor of Mai Ubeid, a Palestinian software engineer who was killed in Gaza by an Israeli air strike.

The sit-in was part of a continuing campaign of protests against Microsoft’s role in the Gaza genocide, a role activists attribute to the company’s cloud service agreements with the Israeli regime.

During the sit-in, the workers and former workers occupied the office of Brad Smith, the current Microsoft president, delivering notices that read: “The People’s Court Summons Bradford Lee Smith on Charges of Crimes Against Humanity.”

In addition, the protesters hung two banners in the space: one that renamed the location the “Mai Ubeid Building,” and a second that listed their demands for Microsoft, which included cutting ties with Israel, calling for an end to the genocide and forced starvation, paying reparations to Palestinians, and ending discrimination against workers.

As the sit-in proceeded inside the locked-down Building 34, a group of current and former employees and supporters assembled outside the headquarters in a show of solidarity.

During the rally program, workers revealed an 18-foot scroll stating the No Azure for Apartheid demands with signatories of over 2,000 workers who signed the petition during the past 15 months since the petition launch.

Investigations revealed earlier this month that Israel’s military surveillance agency, Unit 8200, was making use of Microsoft’s Azure software to store countless recordings of mobile phone calls made by Palestinians living in the West Bank and Gaza.

The company has said it was not aware “of the surveillance of civilians or collection of their cellphone conversations using Microsoft’s services.”

Meanwhile, Microsoft has been employing extreme measures to suppress months of ongoing demonstrations. A Bloomberg report states the company has enlisted the FBI’s help to monitor protestors and collaborated with local police to prevent demonstrations.

Twenty activists were arrested at the company’s headquarters in Redmond, Washington, last week.