In this July 2012 photo, Roger Jean-Claude Mbede poses for a picture in the home of a friend where he had sought refuge, in Yaounde, Cameroon. Mbede, a gay man who was jailed for sending a text message to another man saying 'I'm very much in love with you,' and who was later declared a prisoner of conscience by Amnesty International, died on Friday after his family removed him from the hospital where he had been seeking treatment for a hernia, lawyer Alice Nkom said. 'His family said he was a curse for them and that we should let him die,' she said. (AP Photo/Anne Mireille Nzouankeu)