Tokyo ? As the 15-year statute of limitations on the killing of “Satanic Verses” translator Hitoshi Igarashi nears its July 11 deadline, the police are no closer to solving the case, saying only that they believe the crime was committed by a foreigner.

Igarashi’s body was found on the morning of July 12, 1991, outside an elevator on the seventh floor of the research building in which his laboratory was housed at Tsukuba University. The 44-year-old assistant professor’s throat had been slashed.

An autopsy showed he may have been killed during the early morning hours of July 12.

Igarashi made a name for himself as the translator of “Satanic Verses,” a book by British author Salman Rushdie about Islam that drew criticism from the Muslim world. Late Iranian leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini issued a death sentence in absentia for Rushdie, who subsequently went into hiding, saying the book was blasphemous.

Publication of the book was protested worldwide.