[KrishnaShripad]

Is this to protect his account from being accessed by authorities and checking his DMs? Isn't it better then to disable access to his DMs rather than blocking public tweets/timeline? I don't see a point in suspending his entire account when all his tweets would probably be available in some public archive/wayback machine.

[O__________O]

(Have limited experience on the topic, just attempting to respond based on what little I do know.)

Twitter stating the obvious has no control over information that’s no longer on its servers. Possible Wayback may not not even be aware of the risks it’s creating.

That said, DMs are very much in Twitter’s control and it is not uncommon for highly motivated parties with substantial resources to either insert employees into companies like Twitter or target employees via bribes, blackmail, etc. Google’s first publicly disclosed attack, which among other things targeted activist accounts, very likely was a result of insider helping. Beyond that, if Twitter did not do anything, it is a very real possibility that the activist might be tortured for their passwords; if the accounts don’t exist, are not recoverable, at least for that specific reason, it would be irrelevant.

There are so many situations to account for, but deleting the account/data is this safest minimal viable path.