DUBAI, United Arab Emirates — On his last visit to Iran, Canadian-based blogger Hossein Derakhshan was detained and interrogated, then forced to sign a letter of apology for his blog writings before being allowed to leave the country. Compared to others, Derakhshan is lucky. Dozens of Iranian bloggers over the last two years have faced harassment by the government, been arrested for voicing opposing views, and fled the country in fear of prosecution. In the conservative Islamic Republic, where the government has vast control over newspapers and the airwaves, weblogs are one of the last bastions of free expression, where people can speak openly about everything from sex to the nuclear controversy. But increasingly, they are coming under threat of censorship. The Iranian blogging community, known as Weblogistan, is relatively new. It sprang to life in 2001 after hardliners - fighting back against a reformist president - shut down more than 100 newspapers and magazines and detained writers. At the time, Derakhshan posted instructions on the Internet in Farsi on how to set up a weblog. Since then, the community has grown dramatically. Athough exact figures are unknown, experts estimate there are somewhere between […]