A court set up by rulers to judge those who resist them is not a neutral test of guilt. The real question it raises is whether the law itself deserves to exist. Putting the rebel on trial lets force wear the robes of fairness.
When rulers try to shrink a resister into a common criminal, each attempt can make him look larger as a revolutionary. A prisoner who never begs turns his own trial into a stage for his cause.
A single leader's defiance stands for generations of stolen land and broken bodies, not just his own fate. Ordinary people like market women, workers and peasants are the true moral backbone of the struggle. The leader speaks for the dead and the living together.
Before power turns to pain, it tries to buy surrender. First comes a plea for one's life, then the claim that the rulers made everyone richer, then the pull of religion, business and politics. Only when every offer to make the resister betray his comrades has failed does it turn to torture.