Gitmo Detainees Get Game Boys and Art Lessons

So this is what the office did with my "adopt a family" money?

Detention camp staff at the US Navy base in Cuba are already teaching English to the 255 inmates despite fears that it might allow them to eavesdrop on their guards.

Barack Obama, the US president-elect, has promised to close the camp, which was set up to hold foreign terrorism suspects captured after the American-led invasion of Afghanistan in 2001.

However, convinced that such a decision is a long way from being carried out, camp staff are attempting to soften the notoriously Spartan existence of Guantanamo inmates.

"We want to keep their brains stimulated. We're not here to give degrees," Zak, the camp's Arab-American cultural advisor, told the Miami Herald.

"Once they are engaged and busy, they leave the guards alone."

Initiatives will include circulating Egyptian newspapers and Game Boy-style electronic games around the tiny cells and holding more "movie nights" featuring pre-recorded sport.

Art and geology classes will also be offered, although the former will not include sharp objects. Prisoners are already allowed to have crayons and Zak said some were "good artists".

"They draw greeting cards for family. They draw weapons," he said. "They draw whatever they want. You can't stop a detainee from thinking." Kristin Wilhelm, a lawyer who represents Guantanamo detainees, said the cultural programme was seven years too late.

Don't you just know these fellas are some Grand Theft Auto IV playing fools?