OK, further Googling gave me the answer to my own question: use withOffsetParsed(), as so:

final DateTimeFormatter df = DateTimeFormat        .forPattern("EEE MMM dd HH:mm:ss 'GMT'Z yyyy");final DateTime dateTime = df.withOffsetParsed()        .parseDateTime("Mon Aug 24 12:36:46 GMT+1000 2009");

This works.

also you can chose:

// parse using the Paris zoneDateTime date = formatter.withZone(DateTimeZone.forID("Europe/Paris")).parseDateTime(str);

java.time

Quoted below is a notice from the home page of Joda-Time:

Note that from Java SE 8 onwards, users are asked to migrate to java.time (JSR-310) - a core part of the JDK which replaces this project.

Do not use a fixed text for the timezone:

Do not use a fixed text (e.g. 'GMT') for the timezone as you have done because that approach may fail for other locales.

Solution using java.time, the modern Date-Time API:

import java.time.OffsetDateTime;import java.time.format.DateTimeFormatter;import java.util.Locale;public class Main {    public static void main(String[] args) {        String strDateTime = "Mon Aug 24 12:36:46 GMT+1000 2009";        DateTimeFormatter parser = DateTimeFormatter.ofPattern("E MMM d H:m:s VVZ u", Locale.ENGLISH);        OffsetDateTime odt = OffsetDateTime.parse(strDateTime, parser);        System.out.println(odt);        // Custom fromat        DateTimeFormatter formatter = DateTimeFormatter.ofPattern("uuuu-MM-dd'T'HH:mm:ss.SSSXXX", Locale.ENGLISH);        System.out.println(formatter.format(odt));    }}

Output:

2009-08-24T12:36:46+10:002009-08-24T12:36:46.000+10:00

ONLINE DEMO

Learn more about the modern Date-Time API from Trail: Date Time.

^{* For any reason, if you have to stick to Java 6 or Java 7, you can use ThreeTen-Backport which backports most of the java.time functionality to Java 6 & 7. If you are working for an Android project and your Android API level is still not compliant with Java-8, check Java 8+ APIs available through desugaring and How to use ThreeTenABP in Android Project.}