1. The world's oldest surviving written extradition agreement - and peace treaty - was made by Ramesses II of Egypt and the neighbouring Hittites in about 1259 BC. Sometimes known as the Treaty of Kadesh (following a battle there some years earlier), the agreement bound both sides to repatriate criminals and political refugees from the other side.
The Egyptian version of the treaty is preserved at Karnak. Its counterpart was discovered at Hattusa - site of the Hittite royal palace - in Turkey in 1916. A copy of that version now hangs on the walls of the UN headquarters in New York.
2. The first US extradition agreement was with Great Britain in 1794. It was not a full treaty but a single article in a broader treaty which sought to settle outstanding issues between the two countries that had been left unresolved since American independence. It only mentions the crimes of murder and forgery. The US's first modern treaty was signed with Ecuador in 1872, according to Douglas McNabb, an expert in US federal criminal law and international extradition.
Early treaties often recite a "laundry list" of crimes, while modern ones tend to specify crimes that have a minimum sentence of a year in prison says McNabb. Early treaties such as those with Ecuador, Venezuela and Cuba include murder, assassination, piracy, mutiny and revolt, bigamy, counterfeiting and unlawful destruction of property such as railroads and bridges. Abortion was added in later updates.
