British authorities have upheld a suspension barring International Criminal Court (ICC) Chief Prosecutor Karim Khan from practicing law in the United Kingdom, the country’s Bar Standards Board announced Tuesday, as the embattled prosecutor remains under investigation over sexual misconduct allegations.

The regulator for lawyers in England and Wales first suspended Khan in June — a step it said is reserved for “very serious and urgent cases” — and extended the ban this week after a hearing, pending the outcome of the disciplinary case. The 56-year-old, who has denied wrongdoing, has been at the center of the scandal for more than two years over allegations brought by a former female aide.

His fate now rests with the ICC’s oversight body, the Assembly of States Parties, which will hold a special session on July 24 at United Nations headquarters in New York. The body’s executive committee recently concluded that Khan had engaged in serious misconduct and urged member states to consider removing him from office.

According to an Associated Press investigation, Khan moved the woman — who had worked in another ICC department — into his office, after which she became a regular presence on official trips. Whistleblower documents allege that on one foreign trip he asked her to rest with him on a hotel bed and sexually touched her, and cite other nonconsensual incidents in his office.

The disciplinary fight unfolds as the ICC faces mounting pressure from the Trump administration, which has long challenged the court’s authority. US President Donald Trump has sanctioned Khan and a dozen other ICC officials over the court’s arrest warrants against Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and its investigation into US personnel in Afghanistan.

On Monday, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced what the State Department called a “sweeping campaign to dismantle the threat posed by the ICC to US sovereignty,” pledging to press the court’s 125 member states to withdraw, sanction organizations that cooperate with it, and bar ICC staff from entering the United States.

In Nov. 2024, the ICC issued arrest warrants for Netanyahu, his former defense minister Yoav Gallant, and Hamas military chief Mohammed Deif — since killed by Israel — over alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity in Gaza. The court said there were reasonable grounds to believe Netanyahu and Gallant bore criminal responsibility for starvation and the persecution of Palestinians, charges Israel vehemently denies.

Israeli officials say the military has gone to extraordinary lengths to avoid civilian casualties, pointing to Hamas’s practice of embedding fighters within the civilian population and using hospitals, schools, and mosques for military operations.

All parties to the Rome Statute — the 1998 treaty that established the ICC — are obligated to arrest Netanyahu should he enter their territory. But several member states, among them Hungary, France, Poland, and Italy, have signaled they would not do so.

Israel, like the United States, never joined the court and rejects its jurisdiction. It argues that the ICC improperly asserted authority by admitting “Palestine” as a state party in 2015, maintaining that no sovereign Palestinian state exists to confer it.