Its not about hero or sainthood or even admiration in any way.  

Injustice with a horrific sentence, totally incomporable with any previous similar legal infraction.  The judge literally said it was a political sentence, not for the crime but for what he believed.

Assange?  Him too.  Snowden?  Same.  We don't need to pick or focus on one, but it isn't wrong to do so.